


Lifelines

by sporklift



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Domestic, Alternate Universe - Politics, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Eddie Kaspbrak is a Mess, Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Multiverse, Multiverse Travel, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Second Chances, See the end of chapter one for more warnings, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:13:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22306261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sporklift/pseuds/sporklift
Summary: There are some things your soul just keeps coming back to.In which Eddie Kaspbrak gets a second chance at life. And a third. And a fourth.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 123
Kudos: 89





	1. Chapter 1

Eddie Kaspbrak is still bleeding. It’s thick and hot in his throat, clotting sludge. Metallic on his tongue. He’s sweating and cold and it takes all the strength he’s got to hold onto Richie’s hands. The air is sour and he’s _freezing._ Dripping like a wax doll. Viscous and icy. Fading. 

Around him, the world shakes and twists. The Clown looms in the space above, flexing Its spidery claws. Dark and light mix blue and green and Eddie has to blink. It takes energy to bring his eyelids back up. He can hear his friends, their echoing calls, peppering dots in the air with their noise. The loud cries. Crouched in front of him, Richie clings to Eddie’s knuckles, shouting with the rest of them. The room shakes with the crescendo. Or maybe that’s just Eddie’s imagination. 

_Clown! Fucking clown!_

Eddie’s lungs feel stiff. They’re heavy. 

_Clown! Clown!_

He’s holding himself intact. The mess of his hands under Richie’s, clamping the gaping hole over his guts shut. A butterfly clip of sorts. Ineffectual as literal butterfly wings. Eddie can still feel thick wetness seeping between his fingers. He’s getting colder. He’d shiver, but he doesn’t have the energy. 

Richie’s hands leave his. He’s on his feet and running towards the rest of the Losers. 

_And it’s best this way._

Cold as shit, alone on the wet underground, Eddie coughs. He sighs and pushes his diaphragm with every ounce of muscle he’s got. He breathes - slow - and then -- 

He... _sinks?_

He’s slipping into the damn ground, straight through the mud and the muck and bloodstained soil. It gives way and he falls into its falley -- down, down -- further down -- 

The voices, their shaking loudness, fades. Softens. It gets quieter and quieter each time. 

_Fucking clown! You’re a clown!_

_Clown…_

_...clown…_

Eddie can’t hear anything anymore. He’s on his knees, surrounded by the murky darkness. Light, or some facsimile of it, fades and flickers over him in waves. Maybe he’s a league underwater -- it’s shimmery, dark blue -- but when he looks up, he can’t find the source. 

Spitting blood from his mouth, Eddie licks away the lingering tang from his teeth, bitter and syrupy. His shirt clings wet to his chest, but the weakness, the cold shivering that overtook before, is long gone. 

Eddie Kaspbrak isn’t tired anymore. The second he realizes this is the second hs bolts to his feet. 

He can hear his own breathing, and tries to call “ _Richie?”_ into the nothingness. 

There’s no echo. The sound fades in the distance. Falling deaf, soft and muted, as though screaming into cotton. Muffling a sob and twisting his spine over his back, he tries again. “Bill? Beverly? Mike? Ben?” 

Nothing. 

Once more. 

“Can anybody fucking hear me?!” 

Alone. 

An all-too familiar tightness fills his chest. His lungs won’t budge. Not like before, but like every other time. When his heart wouldn’t stop pounding and his hands got all clammy and -- 

_If I’m fucking dead, the least I could do is get over my fucking asthma._

_Wait._

_Dead?_

With the thought, a cold ripple shudders through him. Muttering to himself, if only to hear something in the silence, Eddie shakes his head. “Get a fucking grip, Eds. C’mon, man. You’re breathing. People don’t just _breathe_ when they’re dead, right?” 

It’s funny, he can almost hear his mother in his ear. _It’s what you get, putting yourself in danger. You’re too delicate, sweetie._

Maybe he’s gone to hell. 

_You didn’t actually ‘believe’ you could kill It, did you? All by yourself? What gives you the right?_

He coughs, and something thick and black splatters on his arm. Black bile, vomit, dark poison. 

Maybe he’s rotting from the inside out. 

He shakes his head. “No, no, no. That’s impossible.” 

But, then again, he’d just been skewered by a demon clown and sunk underground to...whatever the fuck this is. He isn’t entirely sure what ‘impossible’ means anymore. But here’s what he knows: one second he’d been under the house on Neibolt street. One second he’d been skewered clean through. He’d gotten more and more tired, and Richie was holding his hands. Bill and Bev and Mike and Ben were yelling. And then Eddie sunk. Now he’s here. 

However, he’s breathing. Not without a certain severity and difficulty. But his lungs are working. And that’s not nothing. 

He just needs a moment, a second to figure this out, see a little more. He won’t get anywhere by standing still. 

And so - he steps forward. 

Something clunks on the ground, hard and sharp - metallic and heavy with its clatter. He jumps, almost screams in surprise. Crouching, he sees a thin silver chain. There’s a glow to it, buzzing and flickering, like an old lightbulb. 

Picking it up, Eddie feels its weight, and his eyes follow it, as it fades into the distance. 

It’s better than nothing. The first bone this place has thrown him. Picking at the chain as he goes, he rows on forward. Hauling his body weight forward, clinging to the chain like a lead rope. 

He can feel a breeze, now. A cool, shocking feeling. There’s dust flickering in the wavy light, little particles and spores, whisking by his head. 

It’s surreal; it’s bizarre. The whirligigs swirl together and surround him, swirling like a whirlpool. 

And then - he hears something.

“ _Hey, Richie, listen! I think I got him, man!”_

Eddie’s blood runs cold. It’s his own voice. He drops the chain and runs forward. There, encircled and a coil on the chain, bright and flickering, he sees himself, on his hands and knees lying over Richie. He stops and blinks, watches as his own reflection lies there. Richie’s dazed head bobbing up. 

“ _I think I killed It. I did it! I think I did it for real!”_

The reflection lurches back. A gaping hole punctures his chest. Blood splatters everywhere. 

Eddie can hear Richie. Soft, scared. Small. “ _Eddie.”_

Eddie can’t help it this time. He screams. He can feel his heart pounding in his chest. His hands are all clammy. His knees turn to jelly, and without knowing what happened, he’s flat on his back. 

The reflection, the Eddie coiled up in the buzzing chain, repeats. He’s crouching over Richie again. “ _Hey, Richie, listen! I think I got him, man!”_

Without thinking, Eddie runs. He abandons the chain - hurdling forward in the darkness. He can see light, up in front of him. And, where that goes, he doesn’t even fucking care. But he’s not about to relive that moment, over and over again. 

And then, as the next set of lights get brighter - there are gunshots. Someone far away screams, “ _HIT THE DECK!”_

Shells whizz by. Eddie falls again. His own likeness, a different reflection in a helmet flings himself against a wall Eddie cannot see. He has a rifle strapped to his chest. 

He - too - is wrapped up in a chain. It’s brighter. Not buzzing. Eddie blinks, looks past the reflection, and can see where the chain leads. 

There’s another Eddie, in the distance. Equally wrapped up in this chain, wrapping his shoulder in an ace bandage. 

There’s more gunshots. He hears the far-away voice again, _“HIT THE DECK!”_ and, to avoid the whizzing shells, Eddie runs - again. In the distance, there’s more light. 

Maybe it’s stupid to live life by moth rules - to directly to the light - but, for now, it’s all Eddie has to go on. 

This time, he hears a howl. He sees the Losers, all entangled in a million different chains, standing in a circle back to back. He sees his own - he’s holding a fireplace poker. In the mess of light and lines, one of them flickers. A silhouette - a hulking snarling creature emerges from the darkness. Fangs. They glisten. They’re sharp. 

Eddie runs, again. 

One foot in front of the other. Eddie’s sprinting. He sees himself, over and over again. Once, he’s walking - still wrapped up in a glowing silver chain, leading into another likeness of himself, and on and on until the chain disappears in the distance. 

He’s in a hospital bed, and EKG blees to a halt. It buzzes and fades and clamps into black.The chain around this reflection circles and stops. Emerging from it, a new line. It forks, and disappears in the distance. 

Eddie runs away. He won’t follow. Just in case whatever is at the end of that line is the same shit that’s waiting for him. He’s not ready.

He keeps going. _What the fuck?_

There are lines and lines, webbing to meet and break at other places. Collections of his life he moves through. Speckled dust, swirling on a heavy wind, craft the moments - flicker over the silhouette. Eddie moves. 

He can hear yelling. His voice is buried under Myra’s shrieking. A plate shatters against a wall. 

Moving on, he sees two bodies in darkness. Eddie recognizes himself in the silhouette - illuminated briefly in the chain’s glow, moving slowly. There’s a taller body - a man’s - pressed up to him. 

Eddie paces through. He doesn’t look up again until he reaches the next down the line, onto a different lifetime. He can see himself, rushing in place, wearing a long coat. He has a stethoscope behind his neck. An unknown woman pushes a moving stretcher. “ _Patient catatonic, pressure 160/86…”_

What’s baffling, Eddie thinks as he shifts, slowing his pace, is how this is all _him._ A million different versions of himself, moments fragmented from a million lives - connected on this chain, and spinning out to meet the next moment. 

And all Eddie can do is pace between them. 

He walks on, and - for a shocking moment - comes into a moment of silence. He sees his reflection, the darkened version of himself, slumped over a steering wheel. His shoulders shake. 

It’s so far away, and he’s so fucking alone, that the shock of it hits Eddie harder than any of the battling, fighting, screaming. And - why - what’s happening? Maybe he can trace it back. 

Eddie picks up the limp chain that connects to his weeping self. It’s smooth and warm to the touch. It moves. Rattles. Tries to jump out of his hands. 

The breeze picks up. The chain connects and, when Eddie tries to pull it away, it tangles on his arm. The breeze turns to wind, flecks of dust and spores wrap around him. 

The wind swirls, mad whirligigs, threatens to take him into the air. 

There’s no one to call out to, only his own reflections, but Eddie screams. He moves to run, but the wind rushes against him - every direction, blocking out his ears. It’s cold against the wet blood on his shirt. The particles swirl together on the wind, impossibly high. 

Eddie can’t breathe anymore. The air rushes out of his stomach, robbed from his throat, curled up in the glowing silver chain, shutting his eyes as the lightheadedness takes over - rushing him into a suffocating sleep. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The following notes are a little spoilery. 
> 
> On the **Major Character Death** Tag. There’s going to be a lot of death here. Some more gnarly than others. However, because this fic deals with a multiverse and Eddie moving through different lifetimes, these deaths won’t necessarily “stick” through the story. So, while I assure you this is ultimately a fix-it for the canon-divergent ‘verse, there's a lot of death here along the way. 
> 
> **Additional Warnings** : Again, as mentioned in the tags, graphic violence is a big part of this. Other potentially triggering/upsetting material include: cheating, homophobia (including some uncensored slurs), prescription drug abuse, implied/reference suicide, and gore.
> 
> It is my hope that I’ve used these elements only in ways that serve the story I am trying to tell and that they do not come off as gratuitous or for shock-value. 
> 
> Please remember to always stay safe and if something seems triggering, you can always give this (or any) fic a pass!


	2. Chapter 2

Eddie springs awake, bed unmoving with Tempurpedic softness. His heart pounds, chasing away the phantom memory of blood gushing, the taste of it, the weakness. His hand flies up to his cheek, touching quick, just so be safe. No cut. Beside him, Myra’s bosom slides up and down, sleeping mask over her eyes, and her mouth is open with shallow sleeping breaths. 

This is Eddie’s bed. His life. The floral bedspread and framed family photo propped askew on the dresser. Eddie is home. Back to normal. 

It was all just some nightmare.

He sighs. It all seemed so real. Every bit of it, from the demon clown to the dark place afterward. He can still taste the Chinese food, too, from before it all went to shit. 

He’s not sure he’s ever had a nightmare that vivid before. It must be a side-effect of some new medication. He can’t remember if he’s  _ taking  _ anything new, but it’s the best explanation he can conjure. Because it’d been one hell of a specific dream. Layered. He’d dreamt that he’d grown up with these friends, and then forgotten about them, and had a lifetime worth of memories stolen and given back. And, now, revealed to be part of some elaborate nightmare machine. 

The weird part, he realizes, staring up at the crown molding on his ceiling, is that  _ some  _ of these friends, Eddie can recognize. He’s seen Beverly Marsh on magazine covers. Eddie owns a few of William Denbrough’s novels on his Kindle because Myra doesn’t like the massive hardcovers cluttering up her bookshelves. He’s seen Richie Tozier’s stand-up before. But then...some others…

Mike Hanlon? Ben Hanscom? Stanley Uris? 

Where the fuck had  _ they  _ come from? He’d probably seen their faces just crossing the street. Read the names in a phonebook. Something like that.

Everything else, save for the severity, was standard nightmare fare. A demon clown that shapeshifted into a fucking leper? Sure. Why not? Morphing pomeranian? Yeah. Childhood bully escaping the asylum and stabbing Eddie in the fucking face? All normal nightmare stuff. 

(Except. For the last bit. He swears he remembers the pain of the knife through his cheek. The adrenaline. The pain, too, of a claw through his heart and lungs. God, it hurt so badly. But that’s impossible. You don’t actually  _ feel pain  _ in dreams. Not like in real life.) 

His heart is still racing and he’s already sweated through the back of his t-shirt. Eddie figures he won’t get any more sleep like this and kicks the blankets off his side of the bed. They fold over Myra’s sleeping form, and she stirs, before flopping back over on her side. 

It’s still dark in the room when Eddie rises to his feet. He’s still half asleep. So, when Eddie walks into the wall where he thought the door ought to be, it’s because he’s still groggy and disoriented. 

He’s always been good at directions. But whatever this new medication he’s on must be a doozy. When he wakes up and remembers what it is, he needs to take a closer look at the side-effects. 

He stumbles out the door, tripping on the steps leading out of the bedroom. 

Wait. 

Steps? 

Blinking in the dim glowing light over the oven, Eddie starts. 

This...this isn’t his fucking house. 

Sure. It’s decorated like the condo in Queens - with all of Myra’s little ceramic bunnies and bowls full of fucking pinecones, but the space is different. It’s open in its flatness, rooms don’t exist as much as a single vacant space. A cream and gold cavern of a room, sprawled out in front of Eddie, free-flowing openness between kitchen, dining room, and den. The floor is the wrong kind of hardwood. The walls seem to curve in from its openness, curving in, like he’s stuck inside a fishbowl. 

Running his hand through his hair, he checks for bumps. He blinks a million times, just in case his eyes are playing tricks on him, and when the space doesn’t shift back into the gilded maze of rigid walls he’d been calling home for the last five years of living memory, he takes a step forward. Muttering to himself, he muses, “What the fuck?” 

Pacing slowly through the kitchen, he looks around. Opens a few cupboard doors and - somehow, on a flare of an instinct knows exactly where to go to find the matching crystal glasses, reflective luster superimposed. He can hazard a guess about how much they cost. 

Somehow, still on that instinct, when he goes to fill the glass in the refrigerator door, something in him knows he has to press twice against the mechanism to get the right amount of ice. 

But he still can’t figure out where he is. It’s knowledge without context. 

And, moreover, there’s no reasonable explanation for this strangeness in the apartment. Maybe he’s still dreaming. Maybe he took too many of whatever this new pill is and he’s about to choke on his own puke from the overdose. 

He downs the water like a shot. 

“Eddie?” Myra’s voice cuts into the silence and, without realizing it, Eddie jumps. She crosses her robe over her chest. “It’s the middle of the night. What are you doing awake?” 

“I’m fine. Just needed some water. I’ll be back in bed in a minute.” 

Myra frowns and treads down the steps, into this proscenium of a living space. “Are you sick?” 

“I said I’m fine.” Eddie really needs to shuffle through the medicine cabinet. See what there is, whatever he’s forgotten about. 

“You don’t have to  _ yell  _ at me when I’m only being concerned for your well-being,” Myra snaps. 

The instinct comes quick. But without any other confusion or lack of context. At least this makes sense with everything else Eddie knows, for sure, to be true. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I just had the weirdest fucking dream and I think it set me off.” 

“It could be stress, you know. You’ve been taking a lot of high profile jobs lately.” 

“What do you mean?” Eddie blinks. In the forefront of his brain, he has hundreds of memories with fine print and statistics in an initialed briefcase. And then - at the tick of Myra’s head - other memories shoot through. Images, fragmented and - like the moments in Eddie’s nightmare, illuminated as though they were underwater. Leathery car seats. Busy New York streets. Faces recognizable from magazines and TV.  _ Kaspbrak Limousine and Chauffeur Service.  _

Eddie has no idea where the statistics and briefcase images came from. Or why they came first, untinged and with a whole world of history behind them, because it all comes crashing in now through the haze. His business - his company - has been off like a shot recently. And that’s where this is all coming from. Obviously. That makes sense. 

The light above the oven flashes in Eddie’s eyes. He rubs the bridge of his nose and leans against the countertop. Myra’s at his side in a second, her hands a little cold on his shoulders. Her voice is sweet and cloying and she slides into his personal space. It feels like it always has - something steady and constant while his head spins. He puts his hand on her shoulder, it’s soft. 

“Come on, Eddie. Let’s go to bed.” 

She’s here. It’s the middle of the night. So, he does. 

* * *

When he wakes up a second time, to an alarm blaring in his ears, nothing at all is clearer. The images from his nightmares come back, again and again. Sometimes gruesome curved yellow-toothed painted faces, the endless loop of watching himself skewered, blood splattering onto Richie’s face, the cycle over and over. Sometimes memories of the apartment he  _ thought  _ he’d woken up to, the dinner at the Chinese place in Derry, wandering into the old Clubhouse with the friends his brain supplied such a vivid storied history. 

But, no matter what, he couldn’t shake it. All morning he tossed and turned and tried to get some sleep. The rare moments he could, those fake dreamy-memories were all that was there. And, when he woke up to the alarm, nothing’s clearer. 

It’s getting old. He needs to get to the bottom of this shit. 

Eddie hauls out of bed, two seconds later, and runs to the bathroom. He whips open the medicine cabinet, and grabs at the array of orange pill containers, reading through the labels. 

_ Fluoxetine. Benazepril. Metformin. Avanafil. Rizatriptan.  _

Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing He didn’t already take and know the side-effects inside and out. Nothing he shouldn’t be able to take together. He huffs. Looks deeper in the cabinet, behind the Pepto Bismol and the Midol, for something - anything - that would explain the vividness, the memory loss.  _ Anything.  _

“Eddie, dear? What are you doing?” Myra appears, a sudden mass in the doorway of the bathroom, sleepy with her mask pressed up into her hair. “I knew you weren’t feeling well. You seemed so off last night. Tell me what’s wrong!” 

“Nothing’s  _ wrong,  _ Marty,” Eddie says, shifting away from the mountains of pills and vitamins. “I’m just looking for my new medication. Have you seen it?” 

Myra blinks. “What new medication?” 

“Or, the newest one.” It’s possible it’s taken a while to build up to such  _ intense  _ side-effects. “I must have taken it last night before bed.”

“Did your doctor give you a new prescription, Eddie? Why wouldn’t you tell me about it?” 

Eddie meets his wife’s eyes in the mirror. Myra’s hands are clamped to her hip. He can see her lip quiver. But, that’s not exactly his top priority. His stomach lurches. His lungs get tight. He can’t squeeze enough air out. “You mean I’m not on a...I don’t know...a fuckin’ sleep aid or something?” 

“Eddie, you’re scaring me.” 

_ Yeah, that fucking makes two of us.  _ Eddie thinks. But, instead, he shakes his head. He has to make something up on the fly. “You know what. I think it must be my blood sugar or something. I’m gonna go get breakfast.” 

Myra stands by, acquiescing with a little squeak, as he slides past her. 

_ Shit.  _

So. Not a side-effect of some new med. What then? 

He pours the quinoa, measuring it out with cinnamon, mixing in the almond milk. It’s a familiar ritual. But, there’s nothing comforting in the muscle memory displaced into this open kitchen. The windows greenhouse the room. It’s hot, even here in the morning. 

Could it be amnesia? He can’t remember hitting his head and he isn’t concussed. He doesn’t have any goose eggs or black eyes. The closest thing he’s got is the fucking pain tearing through his chest, back in his nightmare. The forms, the hundreds of lives, playing out in that dark space. 

But, that was just a dream. To think otherwise would be --- 

Well. It’d be fucking crazy. And Eddie is  _ not  _ crazy.

Is he?

Maybe it’s a tumor. Something malignant and growing somewhere in his brain, making him see and remember things that haven’t happened. Making him forget the facts of his life. That could be it. 

Other than the lightheadedness at the idea, he feels healthy. But, that doesn’t mean shit. Tumors can manifest without you knowing. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he can hear his mother, sticky-sweet,  _ Better safe than sorry. _

Shit. He needs a fucking CT scan. 

It’s still early, but he should be able to leave a voicemail to make an appointment. 

He leaves his bowl on the counter and paces into the bedroom to unplug his phone from the wall. Myra’s looking at him, frowning, rubbing Caudalie lotion on her arms. 

Eddie makes an effort not to look up when he realizes he doesn’t remember his phone password. Thankfully, like with the cups and the ice in the fridge, his thumbs do. 

But, what his thumbs don’t remember, is the name of his doctor. And, out of the decent amount of doctors in Eddie’s contact list, which one is his G.P. 

_ What if I’m just insane?  _

The unsettling thought boils up again. If he goes to a doctor, with all  _ this  _ and it  _ isn’t  _ cancer and it isn’t a response to medication, what else would there be but to lock him up in a psych ward someplace? 

A cruel voice hammers into his head, like it’s sounding off right behind him.  _ It’s your time, Eddie… _

Maybe what Eddie really needs is a stiff dose of reality. If he gets out of the house, and he starts to remember things again, and everything will start making sense again. 

If it doesn’t, well,  _ then  _ he can see about that CT scan. 

“I should be at work,” He says, dropping the phone to pull off his pajamas. 

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Myra places the bottle of lotion down on the nightstand. It hits with a soft clatter on its doily. “You don’t  _ seem  _ well. Maybe you just need to rest a little.” 

Despite the comfort that comes with a warm blanket and heated quinoa, the fact that these elements are the only thing Eddie knows  _ for sure,  _ he can’t do it. Being here, at home, with Myra’s scented candles and potpourri is clouding his senses. Draining his lungs. All he can think about, here, is how  _ different  _ his fucking nightmares were - and he doesn’t know why he keeps wanting to think of that. No. Absolutely not. 

“I’ll be fine, Marty,” He says, shifting through the dresser. He accidentally opened Myra’s side first and amends by reaching through her blouses and dresses for a suit jacket. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Getting dressed?” Eddie shuffles around his side of the dresser for his shirts.

“That’s not your uniform jacket.” 

“Uniform?” 

Myra frowns and rises to her feet. She shuffles over to the dresser and pulls a different jacket. It’s sleek and black and, looks exactly the fucking same as far as Eddie is concerned, but he accepts the jacket anyway. 

It doesn’t help though. She’s on his heels as he brushes his teeth, insisting, “I don’t think you should go in today.” 

And Eddie reassures her, “It’ll be okay.” 

So it goes, as Eddie pulls on his clothes. Myra’s wringing her hands. 

“But are you even safe to drive? You’re a little manic. You should stay at home!” 

“I’m manic because I’m late.” He doesn’t even know if that’s true, but Myra doesn’t correct him. “I’ll feel better once I’m at work. I gotta go.” 

“Eddie--” 

“Goodbye, Myra. I’ll see you later.” 

And, like a shot, he’s out the door. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure if any of the medications listed have adverse side-effects to one another. I tried to research each one but I don't have a medical degree and I had some difficulty finding details on all of them.


	3. Chapter 3

Eddie makes it to work, purely by muscle memory, trying to swallow down the panic. If he focuses and concentrates, he can see snippets of this commute hundreds upon hundreds of times, the tall skyscraper lined drive. The idiots who don’t know how to drive or pay attention to the flow of traffic. It’s just as familiar as it is alien, and - really - he’s trying his best not to focus too much on that. Reminds himself, over and over again, that eventually it’ll all make sense. He just has to focus and believe and  _ try,  _ and his life will come into focus. And the nightmares and visions will be nothing more than a forgotten terror. 

It’s just a matter of throwing himself into his work. 

The paperwork is a familiar mess of signatures. He can’t remember much about the details, or too many people around the desk. But he starts to remember that his receptionist’s name is Don. That he needs to look over the repairs on some of the limos and talk with the insurance company. 

Okay. Maybe, just maybe, he can fake this until he figures it out. Or, at least, until the tumor kills him. 

Myra calls him three times. He tries to keep them short. She’s worried, she says. She wants to make sure he made it to work okay. And how is he feeling? And does he want to get lunch? He’ll be home right after, too? 

He assures her. Yes, he made it. Yes, he’s fine. No, he can’t get lunch. And yes, he’ll be at home as soon as he can. It’s a lot and frequent. 

_ She doesn’t usually call this much,  _ he thinks. And, he’ll consider that a victory. Because, it’s a thread of logic that makes sense, a memory that’s coming back. And, okay. This is going to be okay, he thinks. 

* * *

At four, the intercom buzzes again. Eddie almost groans. But he listens and waits, expecting to hear Don’s exasperated voice, saying, once again, ‘ _ Your wife is on line one.’  _

Instead, however, he says, “Um. Did you want someone else to run and get the four-thirty?” 

“What?” 

Don’s voice sounds after a minute. “Well. Nobody’s gone out to get him yet. You assigned yourself, but I can always get someone else--” 

“No. No. That’s…that’s fine. I’ll get it,” Eddie says. He sits up and pulls his jacket on. Moving around, new scenery had helped once. What’s to say some movement won’t knock a few more things loose? Help him get perspective and shuck away the nightmares? 

Looking briefly at his calendar, Eddie sees the appointment, written in thick blue ink. 4:30 PM _. PICKUP - LAGUARDIA.  _

Easy enough, Eddie thinks. He even knows where that is, without having to rely on muscle memory.

The trick, as it turns out, isn’t how to get to the airport at all, but how to maneuver the extra space - the thin lines and added length of the limousine. He has to widen his turns to compensate for its length. A few people honk at him when he tries to take them too quickly and…

Okay. Fair enough. 

The thing that just won’t stop nagging at Eddie, though, is how he  _ knows  _ he does this sort of thing every day. It’s his job, apart from being the desk jockey and running the thing. He drives these things all the time. But why it feels so alien and surreal, he blames it on the haziness. 

If he just keeps going about his day long enough, the nightmare will fade. It needs to. Maybe he needs to cool it with the SSRIs. Or, at least, maybe not drink wine in the evenings anymore. 

Maybe it’s not that he’s  _ taking  _ a new medication, but maybe he’s taking the wrong ones. Maybe his dopamine and serotonin are all out of whack. 

Schizophrenia doesn’t run in his family, he thinks, as he’s pulling into the airport. But just because something  _ tends  _ to be hereditary doesn’t mean it  _ needs  _ to be. Illnesses have to start somewhere… 

_ Maybe that’s all it is _ , he thinks, pulling into the parking space, and turning to the passenger’s seat to grab the sign for his pickup.  _ I’m sure that could cause this kind of thing… _

When he turns the sign towards him, catching the name on the glossy finished board stock, he almost drops it.  **R. TOZIER.**

Well. That explains why  _ he  _ showed up in Eddie’s dream last night. Maybe he’s picked up Denbrough and Marsh recently. Maybe the other guys are other clients who just happened to order limos…

Eddie really should look into that. 

But, for now, Eddie climbs out of the driver’s seat, sign in tow, and walks towards the terminal, trying to displace the nightmare from any reality - some email correspondence, at the least. The last thing he wants to do is let Richie Tozier think he’s lost his mind. Not when he’s trying  _ so fucking hard  _ to keep it together. 

It’s funny. The bits of the nightmare, when he thinks about Tozier, aren’t actually the frightening parts. Sure, they were  _ stressful  _ as all get out, but that makes sense if it’s actually displaced work anxiety. 

Though that doesn’t make too much sense either. Eddie’s sure he has clients with much higher profiles than some stand-up act who calls himself Trashmouth. There’s no reason to be particularly  _ anxious.  _

Besides, Richie wouldn’t--- 

Well. There’s no way for Eddie to know what he would or would not do. 

Right? 

Curious, as he arrives at the terminal, Eddie whips out his cell phone. Just to see. Just to be safe. He’s having such a hard time sorting nightmare from reality. And he doesn’t really want to fuck this up, to admit that he’s actually gone off his rocker, and if he only has the nightmare to go on…

Maybe Myra was right. He shouldn’t have gone in today. He should’ve stayed home under her afghans and drank tea and watched reality TV with her. 

But, that’s not the situation at the moment. He opens the Google search on his phone, and hastily types in  **richie tozier.**

The top result is a Wikipedia page.  _ Richard (“Richie,” “Trashmouth”) Tozier (born November 7, 1976) is an American stand-up comedian and actor.  _

Eddie scrolls through the article. Quickly. Trying to piece together anything he might need to know. In a professional context, of course. And, either way, there’s next to nothing about Richie’s personal life. Only that he grew up in rural Maine and has gone on record saying he doesn’t like to talk about his childhood in his work. 

Other than that? It all seems...normal. 

Okay, that’s fine. But why would the idea of driving  _ this  _ guy leave such an impression in Eddie’s brain? Why this particular client? 

“Wow, you’re quite the fucking welcoming committee, man.” 

Eddie jumps. He shoves his phone back into his pocket and looks up. Ah. Yes. There he is: Richie Tozier. He’s as tall as he’d been in Eddie’s nightmare, and how on earth did he get  _ that  _ detail right? He’s smiling at Eddie crookedly and there’s a laugh in his voice.

“Sorry about that,” Eddie says, straightening his shoulders. “Can I take your bag?” 

Richie Tozier frowns. “Uh, no. I got it, Eds. Should we go?” 

_ Eds?  _ Eddie starts. He hasn’t introduced himself and he’s not wearing a nametag. Do they...do they  _ know  _ each other? Is  _ that,  _ and not the appointment, the reason he appeared in Eddie’s nightmare? And - if they do know each other - how had Eddie  _ forgotten?  _

Fuck. This...this is not good. 

That does it. He must have fried his brain, somehow. Is he fucking high? Did someone sneak acid into his dinner last night? He definitely should not have put off that CT scan. 

Because, if he isn’t high, if it isn’t a bad interaction between meds, if he doesn’t have a tumor and he doesn’t have any other kind of brain damage…

It’s only that he’s confused. Temporarily out of commission. Somehow not all here. It’s not like his nightmare - the Clown, the pain, the fear, the sinking blackness and heaving shadows - actually happened. 

Once he starts believing that shit he’ll know he really is beyond the pale.

He just needs to drive a little. Clear his head. Let muscle memory remind him where he comes from. Let the  _ real  _ memories seep through the sludge. 

But. No. He takes a few deep breaths and holds the door open for Richie Tozier, who looks at him through his glasses with some kind of thinly veiled bemusement. Eddie can’t think about  _ why  _ or  _ how.  _

Hell. Maybe he’s still dreaming. Maybe he’s in bed, in his regular apartment, waiting for his alarm to go off so he can waltz back into the insurance firm...or maybe he’s rotting in the sewer…

_ No. No. No. Not fucking helping, Eddie.  _

The fact those thoughts come to him, so much more vividly than anything else he’s thought of today startles him. He’s not going to think about it. 

Besides. He needs to be safe to drive. He needs to focus. He slides out of the parking space and sets his eyes straight ahead. He’ll focus on what’s in front of him and on nothing else. 

Leaning over the partition, as they glide onto the busy New York street, Richie says, “Are you... _ okay,  _ dude?” 

“Yeah. Of course,” Eddie nods. “You’re headed to the Four Seasons, right?” 

It sounds like he’s deflecting. Maybe he is. But that shouldn’t matter. Professionalism and composure. He’ll make an appointment to get his head looked at once he’s done here. 

Still, though. Richie’s talking to him with so much familiarity, and Eddie can’t conjure the memory to figure out where it comes from. Or he won’t. Because, all he sees in his mind eyes, sneaking in like light underneath the bedroom door, is a soft look on Richie’s face. He’s dripping with dirty water and streaking droplets on his lenses. He’s holding Eddie’s hand and whispering, “ _ You’re braver than you think.”  _

It’s uncanny. Too real. And not nearly nightmarish enough to fit in with the rest of his dream. 

Eddie sighs and slides his hand down the side of the steering wheel. It’s heated and presses into the pads of his hands like an old friend.

“You’re still wearing your wedding ring,” Richie says and it’s soft and uneven and…

… _ disappointed? _

Eddie blinks and shoots him a glance in the rearview. “Um. Yeah?” 

Richie lets off a nervy laugh and Eddie watches him adjust in his seat in the mirror in short staccato intervals between the rush of cars revving around them. 

“I mean, good for you two,” Richie says. “It’s awesome that you guys worked it out. But, I dunno, you just seemed...pretty committed to leaving her last time.” 

“ _ What?”  _

Eddie’s chest collapses in itself. He can’t fucking breathe. What kind of fucking joke is this? Richie’s always had a thing for jokes, but this seems fucking cruel.

\--- and what the fuck does “always” even mean in reference to Richie? Eddie barely even knows the guy. Right? 

And yet. 

Richie’s leaning forward, his head peeking over the barrier between them. “Eddie?” 

“Yeah. I’m fine,” Eddie repeats for the millionth time today. He’s grasping at whatever slivers of his bearings he can find and swallows down the thickness in his throat. “What do you mean,  _ last time?”  _

Or - you know - ‘pretty committed to leaving her.’ 

Richie exhales sharply and slouches in his seat. “Okay. Fine. Loud and clear, man. We can just pretend it never happened. That’s  _ cool,  _ I guess. Sorry for fucking bringing it up.

Eddie holds on tight to the steering wheel. He’s gonna fucking scream. 

He’s losing his motherfucking mind. It’s a tumor. It’s Alzheimer’s. It’s his brain rotting to gunk. 

“Seriously. Dude. Look. I didn’t mean to make it fucking weird. I just thought that, since  _ you  _ showed up to the airport to get me, that maybe…” Richie swallows. The sound of it going down brings Eddie back into the moment. He takes a little too long in the rearview and the limo jostles to the side. Richie doesn’t seem to notice. “You seemed into it, last time, is all I’m saying.” 

“Richie, I’m…” He fades. 

When it’s obvious Eddie actually has nothing to say. Richie goes on. “And if you came all this way to let me down easy, that's ...fine. I mean. You could’ve texted---I know your wife plays Candy Crush on your phone, but I wouldn't have said anything damning, y’know? You didn’t need to be, like,  _ sneaky. _ ” 

Eddie’s jaw drops. He’s staring back at Richie in the rearview. All of a sudden, he can see the warmth again, the streaks in the glasses. The concern and softness, mirrored with pressure in his hands and…

“RED LIGHT, EDS!” 

There’s a horn. Tires screech. Impact rocks Eddie into the center console. Richie screams. Metal scrapes against metal. Eddie can swear he sees sparks. The limo hurls into the intersection, spinning. 

Eddie flies back into his seat. He flies from one side to the other, coming right for the window. The airbag shoots out half a second too late, burning smoke into his face, and Eddie hits the door. Glass shatters. Pain. Sharp. Eddie blinks at contact, sees the shards of glass. 

The world flashes white. 

  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Homophobic slur.

When Eddie opens his eyes again, there’s blood drying on his forehead. But he’s not slung over a steering wheel; he’s flat on his back. 

“Are you all right?” A woman says. It’s too quiet for a busy New York intersection, and he’s definitely not lying on blacktop and, when the room comes into focus, Eddie realizes Beverly Marsh is crouched over him. She has dirt spread over her cheekbones and a cut on her chin. The light behind her is dim and brown and -- somehow -- they’re inside. 

“Looks like a tripwire,” Another man - Mike Hanlon, Eddie instantly knows - crouches in the corner. He holds a fishing string between his fingers. 

“Well, that’s not good.” And this voice is instantly familiar. Eddie looks over to see Richie Tozier, hauling himself up over a countertop behind a cash register, and shuffles around underneath. 

There’s a clicking and Eddie looks to his side. And, there's Beverly. She's cocking a fucking gun. Eddie scrambles up to his elbows in some crazy attempt to orient himself. 

_What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?_

“I’ll take the perimeter,” Beverly says, holding the glock out in front of her and sliding along the wall. 

Eddie swallows. How badly did he hit his fucking head? He’s lying on dirty black-and-white tile. Blinking around himself, there are lines of empty shelves, some with a few boxes still on top, knocked over and unreplenished. A sign overhead spells out _PHARMACY._ And it still seems so intimately familiar to Eddie. 

But it’s all empty and dirty. Mike helps Eddie to his feet with hands covered in scars. 

Eddie was just in New York, just flew through an intersection. His head just went through a fucking window. This has to be a dream. A nightmare, just like the sewers and the clown. To wake up, he slaps himself on the cheek and finds…

Bristly hair. He has a fucking beard. 

_What a fucking weird detail for a nightmare_. 

He’s not waking up. He looks at his hands, and they’re dirty on the knuckles and under the fingernails. He’s not wearing his wedding ring.

Richie bustles behind the counter, and - Eddie suddenly realizes - his shirt is torn. His glasses smudge under a thick layer of grime and one of the lenses is broken right down the middle. 

He’s looking right at Eddie, and he asks, “Are you okay?” 

Both Mike and Beverly pivot, turning to look at him. And all of their combined gazes, concerned and frowning, make Eddie’s stomach flip over. “Yeah, I’m fine,” He grumbles, raising his hands. Slapping himself on the cheeks, he adds, “I’m...I’m having the weirdest fever dream right now. I just need to wake up.” 

“Shit, waking up? We should’ve tried that five years ago.” Richie mumbles and Eddie flips him off. His laugh is familiar. Soothing. _Normal,_ even. 

Mike’s voice sounds. “You must’ve fallen harder than we thought. What just happened? Before this conversation.” 

“I was in a car crash…I think,” Eddie says, shuffling his feet. “That might’ve been a dream too, actually. And before that, it was this black space and then before _that_ we were in the sewer. I mean, I might just be seventeen dreams in. I just need to fucking wake up and go home.” 

It suddenly occurs to him that he has no idea _what_ he’ll be waking up to, when he comes back from this. 

Beverly’s stepping closer to him, shaking her head. “Honey...none of us have driven a car in...what, two years?” 

Everyone’s staring at him like he’s bonkers. Nuts. Completely off his rocker. Eddie closes his eyes tight. Mutters, out loud because it’s his dream anyway, “I wanna wake up now. I wanna wake up now.” 

And then he opens his eyes. 

It’s the same as it was before. The dirt. The empty pharmacy. Beverly and Mike and Richie staring.

“That usually works,” He murmurs. 

Beverly bites her lip. “Eddie, this isn’t a dream. You can’t wake up.” 

Somehow, something in her tone rings like gospel in Eddie’s ears. But he shakes his head. It doesn’t make sense. 

This time, Mike speaks, “Do you remember what happened five years ago?” 

Five years ago? Eddie pauses. In one strand of memory, he’d been thirty-five and standing at the macrame end of an aisle runner, stiff as fuck in a tuxedo. In another, he was signing the contract to open his own business. And, in yet another…

He thinks he can see the sky opening up. A hulking shadowy falcon ripping into the ground with its talons. 

“The world ended,” He catches himself saying before he can think too much about it. 

_A fucking alien invasion,_ his mind supplies. The immediate, countering thought blows through after: _Fucking_ really _?_

“There you go, he remembers,” Richie says. 

Eddie knees go out beneath him and he slides back against an empty end cap on the nearest aisle. Three lifetimes suddenly swirl through his head. One, defeating a demon clown, choking a rotting leper within an inch of its life. Skewered and holding onto Richie’s hands. Two, meetings and driving cabs through busy New York streets, coming home to Myra and half a bottle of Xanax and a long history of lies. Three, shadowy monsters and running. The sky a frightening doorway to death, people vaporized on the spot, and those who weren’t, running for their fucking lives. 

They’re all vignettes, scattered with missing pieces. And one of them, probably, is real. Or maybe they’re all just bad nightmares. Eddie grasps at each one, trying to find its thread of reality, an understanding of his own fucking life, but there are gaps. He can’t conjure up too much of any of them. Only moments, fleeting, fast, and each one less and less corporeal the more he focuses. 

It’s too much. Eddie grips at the end cap like he’s caught in an undertow. His knuckles are white from the force. “Guys. I think I’m going fucking insane.” 

“Right now? That’s pretty bad timing, man.” 

“Shut up, Richie.” It’s a little reassuring that this response comes so easily.

But Beverly looks at him, frowning, “What do you mean?” 

“I mean two fucking seconds ago I was in New York and a car crash. Or maybe I was in a fucking sewer with a demon fucking clown and it feels like one nightmare after another and I have no clue what’s happening.” He reaches for his pocket, barely even realizing he was feeling for his inhaler. 

“Just breathe,” Mike says. 

“Yeah, ‘cause that’s so fuckin’ easy,” Eddie begins, dragging himself up on wobbly knees. 

“Look,” Beverly inserts, “You just hit your head pretty badly. Let’s stock up for camp and see if you feel better once you get on your feet. Okay?” 

And, at that moment, a shelf against the wall clatters to the floor, falling in a heap. “Do you fuckers _ever_ stop talking?” A crazed voice barks. 

Eddie jumps. Beverly points her gun at the hole in the wall. Emerging, in the dust-streaked expanse, Eddie blinks. 

Henry Bowers steps over the shelf, his cronies flanked at his side - wrinkled and sun-battered. Patrick Hockstetter has a chip in one of his front teeth. They’re all coming around, circling them. 

No. That’s not possible. They were all supposed to be dead.

“So, what?” Bowers cackles. “You losers thought you’d break into _my_ territory and steal _my_ stash?” 

“We didn’t know,” Beverly steps backward, moving into the circle. Eddie rises to his feet. Mike and Richie, he finds, are starting to form a semi-circle. 

And, _shit._ Eddie swallows. He wants to wake up now. Bowers and his cronies are hulking, all of them. Even with the giant betrayal of malnutrition. They’re tall. Hockstetter’s holding barbed wire in his bare hands. Huggins has a baseball bat. Criss has a broom handle, sharpened into a spear. 

Amongst them, the Losers, Beverly’s the only one armed. 

“Hear that?” Hockstetter echoes. “They didn’t know.” 

“What makes you think that’s a FUCKIN’ EXCUSE, HUH?” Bowers advances. “ _Comin’ into MY SHIT?”_

Eddie can’t help the whimper that escapes from his throat. He looks around himself for broken glass. A stick. Something he can use. His head aches. He backs off the endcap, and he can feel Richie and Mike’s shoulders against his, as they back together to stand closer, Beverly. 

Beverly chews on her lip. Her finger rests on the trigger. 

“Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Hockstetter sings, his hands slide over the barbed wire, trailing blood over his palms. He doesn’t even flinch. 

“Try me,” Bev says. 

“Look who’s tryin’ to be tough,”' Bowers sneers. “The whore, the faggots, and the--”

There’s a bang. It’s deafeningly loud. 

Beverly’s pulled the trigger. The shell explodes in the air. A window breaks. And, alongside Mike and Richie and Beverly, Eddie runs. He scrambles to move fast enough. Heading for the picture window, shattered glass creating a sizable opening. 

Something catches on his leg and Eddie falls. Splintering wood cutting through his leg. Victor Criss hulks over him. Eddie screams. 

The pain is sharp. Searing even. 

It’s not supposed to be like this. Not this intense. Not even in nightmares. 

Eddie seals his eyes tight. _Wake up, wake up, wake up._

He hears the impact, muffled hitting, the hard slam of bone. When he opens his eyes, Mike’s standing above him, fists out and Victor Criss in a heap on the ground. Richie pulls Eddie to his feet. He almost gives way, pain searing so he can’t run. 

Eddie can feel the wetness of the blood. The sting. But endorphins take over. Beverly shoots again. And, with an arm around Richie for support, they hurl out the window and - _still -_ run. 

He doesn't get a chance to look behind him, hobbled by the cut in his leg. Beverly comes up to his other side and, propping him up, they move as fast as their three-legged machine can. Mike checks behind them. They whizz through the streets, past overgrown cracks in the blacktop, crumbling brick facades, shattered glass in the streets. 

The sky is muggy, dimming with the evening and they slip into an alley. Behind a dumpster.

All of them press their lips together and wait. Nothing comes. No footsteps or screaming. 

Richie swallows thickly. “I think we lost ‘em.” 

“Should’ve known they’d take the last place for supplies.” Beverly sighs. “ _Fuck.”_

“There’s still Freese’s,” Mike says. “We can probably do some bartering.” 

Eddie feels lightheaded, and Richie turns back to him. 

“Are you okay? You look hurt.” 

“I’m fine--” Eddie begins, but when he rises to get to his feet, he crumples. His pant leg is drenched in blood. He could probably wring it out. 

“Fuck, we need to get back.” 

Eddie’s left blinking and hobbling down two more streets and one more alleyway with his arms slung around Richie and Beverly’s shoulders. It stings, in his leg. The blood slides down his leg, sticky. He hisses through his teeth. 

Fuck. This is real. He’s bleeding, for real, and although his mind is spinning, there’s not much he can do but allow Richie and Beverly to be his crutches as they rush down the cracked street blacktop. Mike looking over his shoulder, making sure nobody’s following them. 

Eddie blinks, and in the low evening light, the red bricks come into view. The Derry Public Library. Most of the ground-floor windows are boarded up. There’s a black Silverado in front of the front door, hood popped open and two tires removed. 

Richie and Beverly rush him around, out to the back of the building. Mike pushes over a crate and still has to jump to reach the ladder for the fire escape, but he grasps it on the first try and it heaves down, rusty cranking, as it shudders on its way down. 

Mike skitters up the ladder first. It billows but the bolts hold steadfast to the fire escape. Beverly’s next and even though she’s tiny and light, the ladder still sways. Unstable. Not safe.

At the top, the two of them push back a plank in the window, leaning from the inside of the frame to look boarded in. 

“Can you make it up?” Richie asks Eddie, gesturing his head to the ladder. 

It’s rusty, he’s lightheaded from blood loss, and he’s got a bum leg, but Eddie nods anyway. “I should be able to.” 

“Got your back.” 

It takes all of Eddie’s upper body strength, holding on with straining fingers, hopping up on his good leg. But he doesn’t falter. The ladder sways and, twice, Eddie thinks he’s going to fucking fall off. But, he holds on, rust crusting on his hands. 

And, honestly, tetanus shouldn’t be a fucking concern right now. Eddie swallows the worry away, hopping up the ladder. 

At the top, Beverly pulls him up. Richie climbs up afterward, and together, they haul the ladder all the way into the fire escape. 

There’s enough of a hole in the window for everyone to squeeze through. Eddie hisses at the pain in his leg, when it rubs up against one of the planks boarding the pane. 

Inside the library, it’s dark. Low light streaks through places in between the planks of the windows, and he’s led, hobbling, up the stairs to an attic space. 

He can see out the window, up here in the attic. Dust streaks through the air, and he’s led up onto a dinner table. 

There’s a corner of hammocks slung up in one corner, a stash of food in another, and stacks upon stacks of books. 

Eddie curls up onto the table, rolling up his pant leg. Beverly flies to the food corner and brings out, funnily enough, the biggest fucking bottle of Grey Goose Eddie’s ever seen, almost entirely empty. 

“How deep is it?” She asks.

“Fuck,” Eddie examines the cut. It stings. Richie’s standing at his side, a hand on his shoulder. 

Mike ducks under the table and pulls out a small handbag. He reaches in and pulls out butterfly clips and ace bandages. “Think this’ll be good enough?” 

Probably not, but it’s gotta be worth a shot. At least it gives Eddie something concrete to focus on. Something other than _What the fuck is happening?_

Beverly pours half a shot’s worth of Grey Goose into a rag, and presses it over Eddie’s cut. 

It stings like a bitch. 

But once the blood’s clean, and Mike’s fastening his skin together with the clips, everyone looks at him.

Richie curls his fingers over Eddie’s shoulder. He leans back, on his elbows, without thinking too much in response. “You feeling better? How’s that concussion?” 

“I’m not fucking _concussed,”_ Eddie hisses while his leg gets wrapped up again. “I just...want to know what the _fuck_ is going on! What kind of fucking amnesia or, I dunno, fucking hallucination I’m stuck in!” 

Richie offers him a halfhearted laugh, and it’s familiar in a million different ways. If Eddie looks back - back into the lives he’s hallucinated - he can hear it in all three. “Hey, I mean....you hit your head, man. That’s probably it. Remember what Bill used to say about this shit? How everyone wants clear answers but life doesn’t work out like that. We’ve lived like that this long.” 

Eddie pauses. _Bill._ That’s it. Maybe Bill won’t know what’s happening, but he’d help him figure it out. Hell or high water, Bill would help. Eddie blinks around the room. There are only four hammocks in the corner. “Where is Bill, anyway?” 

Something cracks. Beverly’s hand flies over her mouth. Mike bites on his lip. Richie’s face falls and he says, softly, “Shit.” 

Mike and Beverly exchange a glance, and then, it’s Mike who says, “Why don’t you start from the beginning, Eddie? Don’t leave anything out.” 

They’re going to think he’s fucking nuts. But maybe he is. Eddie can hardly believe the shit that’s coming out of his mouth. How he doesn’t quite remember anything in specific, only the broadest strokes and the muscle memory. The car crash. How he thought he’d made up another life in a nightmare, a life where he was skewered and fell away from himself. The place in between, his own life playing in moments on repeat. 

It sounds insane, but before Eddie can stop himself, he lets it spill. The nightmare where he found himself skewered, bleeding out - that fucking goddamn clown. And that’s the fucking lifetime that he has the most memory, down to his childhood and college and all that shit. He talks about the sinking and the rows of lifetimes, all around him. What happened when he took one of the chains in his hands. 

When he’s done, all Eddie can hear is Mike shuffling around. He’s looking through the towers of books. Muttering something to himself. 

“What are you looking for?” Beverly asks. 

And, as though on cue, Mike pulls a heavy black tome from the middle of a stack, it sways and topples into the corner. Mike frowns at the mess but goes on. “Are you guys familiar with the idea of a multiverse?” 

“You mean like in fucking comic books?” Richie asks. 

Mike flips through his book. “Yeah. Kind of. The idea is that there’s an infinite amount of dimensions. So, histories, events, _people_ repeating or recurring in similar ways is just a matter of statistics. Technically, there could be thousands of versions of each of us, some very similar to us and some extremely different.” 

Eddie swallows. He nods. What else can he do? It’s an explanation. It’s fucking insane, but it’s _there._

And, furthermore, if the farthest back he can go in his memory, if the most vivid life he’s lived is the one with the fucking demon sewer clown…

That must be where he came from. That must be his original reality. That's where he died, the first time. And if that's reality, maybe this idea - the billions of worlds and times and all that fantasy-shit - isn't as insane as it seems at first brush. 

Mike goes on: “So maybe what Eddie saw in that dark place was just a bunch of different versions of himself, in different dimensions.” 

“Shit,” Richie mutters. Eddie twists around himself, still on the table to look him in the eye. Richie shrugs. “Infinite world and options and we live in _this_ shit? Not fair.” 

“Honk-honk, Richie,” Beverly says softly. 

_Honk-honk? What the fuck?_ Eddie swallows away the thought and turns back to Mike. “People don’t just _stumble_ into different dimensions.” 

Mike frowns and skims over the book. He says, “There isn’t a ton of information out there on this. But...well, there’s a theory.” 

“Okay?” Eddie prompts. 

Mike sucks on his teeth. “It’s possible that you died at the exact same time in two different dimensions. And, well, because your soul doesn’t _belong_ in the dimension it was in, it kind of...kicked you out of one and threw you into the other.” 

Eddie can feel the blood drain from his face. 

“That’s fucking dumb!” Richie says, suddenly standing up straighter. “Eddie didn’t _die._ He’s right fucking here, man.” 

Beverly frowns. “He did hit his head pretty hard…” 

“Not you too!” Richie says. And then, he turns to Eddie, “Come on, Eds, you didn’t _die.”_

“Richie…” Eddie runs his tongue over his molars. He shuts his eyes. And then, turns away from Richie’s eyes, boring into his through the thick layer of dirt on his glasses. Back to Mike, and the whole of the company, Eddie says, “But, wait, this all started when I _was_ in the dimension I belong in.” 

“Maybe something out there wanted you to get a second chance,” Mike suggests. "I don't know for sure." 

Richie lets out a hollow laugh. It sounds bitter. “Do you guys _hear_ yourselves? Am I the only one who sees a one-hundred-percent _alive_ Eddie here on the table?” 

Eddie makes a point to ignore it. He almost can’t hear over the racing in his chest. The wheeze rising from his lungs. 

He sighs. “So, what, I’m just supposed to flash between different lifetimes and dimensions...like, _forever?”_

And otherwise, doomed to go fucking crazy in a million different lifetimes. A million different tumors and breakdowns. Fitting. Maybe this is his own personal hell. 

Because, even if he could get back, what was there to salvage? He’s rotting in a sewer, alone in the dark. And, if he’s not, what is there? Accounts. Insurance. The long-dead voice of his mother ringing in his ear. The sharp glare in his wife’s eyes. A lost lifetime, memories he’d never been good enough to keep, of friendship and love. 

“Maybe not,” It’s Beverly this time who pulls him from reverie. Somewhere along the line, Mike passed the book around. It’s open on her knees. She goes on: “All it suggests is that the soul needs to _belong._ That doesn’t mean it was created there, right? You three are my family, and I belong with you all. Maybe it’s the same thing.” 

“You’re saying that I just need to make a home here, in the alien apocalypse?” 

“It’s not ideal, but…yeah,” Beverly says. She pauses and reaches back for the Grey Goose. “I know we need to save this for disinfectant but I think we could all use a shot.” 

They’re silent, for a moment, before Mike speaks up again. “Bill’s alive, in your world?” 

Eddie nods, even though he can’t really say - since he can’t account for anything since...well, since he fucking _died._ But - as far as he knows, Bill was alive. 

“And Ben?” 

“Are they both…?” Eddie can’t make himself finish the question. If he thinks, he can come up with the answer himself. 

“What about Stanley?” And that’s from Richie, blinking at Eddie through his dirty broken lenses, his voice a little weak and Eddie can feel his heart wrench in his chest. 

“Stan’s...no. He’s not…no.” 

Richie bites down on his tongue and leans on the other end of the table until his knuckles go white. 

Beverly pulls the cork on the vodka and throws her head back, a droplet of the alcohol spills from the corner of her mouth, leaving a clean trail in the grime on the slope of her pretty jaw. 

They pass the bottle around, and Eddie takes his sip. It goes down smooth. Shockingly, so, considering the circumstances. Once they’re done, and Beverly re-corks the bottle, Eddie has to ask. 

“So. What the fuck? Bowers?” 

“The actual apocalypse didn’t last long. That Thing took what it could -- _who_ it could -- and fucked off,” Mike says. “Unfortunately, that included most of the world’s sanity. Certain world leaders were taken. And after people realized aliens were real, all bets were off. It was chaos.” 

“Why didn’t we try to get out? Go someplace--I dunno. A little less fuckin’ squalid?” 

Richie snorts, and when Eddie looks back at him, he shrugs. “What? That just...it sounded like you.” 

“It’s not that we didn’t try,” Beverly says. “But, when we’re here, we’re together. And we know what to expect and the dangers. The devil you know versus the devil you don’t.” That sounds...perfectly reasonable. Or, at least as reasonable as the situation allows. It’s no less bizarre, Eddie realizes with a lump in his throat, than his own phantom memories, the ones from his first life, clinging at the edges of his brain. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: non-graphic references to hunting/butchering animals for food.

For half a moment before Eddie opened his eyes this morning, he almost thought he was back in his own reality. It’s the first thing, ready in his brain, is that he’s in the Derry Townhouse, curled up in the low-thread count. 

And, _did they get that fucking Clown? Did they kill It?_

But then he opened his eyes. And there he was staring blankly at the bare rafters on the ceiling. 

And he thought: _Oh. That’s right. Apocalypse. Alternate dimensions._

It’s not exactly a regular fucking Tuesday, but the memories come through. And it’s clear as fucking day. The facts of the matter, at least. And they sound bizarre as fuck, but the fact it’s stuck with him for--

What, thirty-two hours? 

Thirty-two hours and counting, he says, hiking the backpack up his shoulders. They’re walking through the woods outside Derry, him, Mike, Beverly, and Richie. Eddie can feel the thick underbrush through the worn soles of his sneakers as they walk through, deeper and deeper. 

Nobody’s talking. The only sound is the air rattling the trees up overhead and the crunch of their shoes on the ground. 

It’s Eddie’s first full day in the apocalypse, and, so far, it’s just been a lot of walking. Not that he really should be complaining about something as normal as walking. At least this isn’t life-threatening. 

Assuming the bandaging on his leg holds out. And that the cut doesn’t get infected. 

But, he’s probably jumping the gun. He’s walking in the woods, quietly, behind his remaining friends. And, sure, he’s stuck in the fucking apocalypse. And that’ll be...maybe, forever. 

Or maybe until, like Bev said last night, his soul _belongs._

Eddie isn’t sure what that would look like. Because apparently he just ran away from the place he _had_ belonged in. Maybe there’s a part of him that doesn’t want to. 

And, what would that even look like? If Eddie had survived, down in the sewer, what would he have done after? 

_Home-again, home-again, jiggety-jog._

Maybe they would have gotten breakfast, all the Losers and him, and then Eddie would go back to the Derry Townhouse and pack his shit and he’d be home again. 

_Home again forever._

And everything that happened would’ve been for the greater good, and it would’ve been fine and he’d belong there, like that. He always had. It was what he deserved. 

Belonging, really, just meant understanding and comfort, and predictability -- 

And how the hell is he supposed to get that _here?_ With the alien invasion and everyone dead and rationing supplies and hammocks that smell like shit? 

_Come on, Eds. You can do this. One foot in front of the other._

By the time they finally stop, Eddie realizes where they are. They’re at the base of the quarry. The cliffside towers overhead, the summer sun casting short morning shadows, and - there - they all drop their backpacks. 

Eddie blinks as they step out into the sun from the fringe of the forest. “So, what are we doing here?” 

Richie unzips the front pocket of his backpack, and uncoils a ball of fishing wire. “Gotta eat to live, man.” 

“Well, hang on,” Beverly says. She’s walking around in the fringe of the forest, moving shrubbery. And then, she grins and looks up. “We got one!” 

Eddie cocks his brow and blinks over. 

Beverly reaches through the bushes. At the end of a thin noose, a rabbit lies limp. It sways in the momentum of her string. Matted brown fur, ears stiff at its sides. Beady eyes glassy, open and empty. 

“Jesus, what the hell?” Eddie doesn’t even realize he’s said anything, but he’s stumbling back. 

Beverly, wades through the bushes, rabbit out at her side. She sucks in through her teeth, empathetic grimace on her face. “It’s dinner.” 

Eddie’s pretty sure he can feel all the blood in his face drain. “ _Oh.”_

He hadn’t really figured this part, last night and on the walk over. In this anachronistic Year Zero, they have to eat rabbit and skin it themselves and - if they don’t - they don’t eat. And, like Richie just said, you’ve gotta eat to live. 

Wordless, almost mechanically, they separate. Richie dives into the fringes of forest, collecting sticks and dried leaves. Mike starts digging with a meat cleaver, making a trench and lining it with rocks for the fire pit. Beverly hangs the rabbit by its toes and lifts a thin paring knife, just under its skull. 

Eddie looks away. He knows there are things to do. And he wants to make himself useful. The idea of sitting around and waiting for someone to tell him what to do makes him feel itchy. But...what on earth is there to do? 

Turning his back to Beverly and the sticky metallic scent of blood and guts from the rabbit, Eddie shuffles around, hoping there will be something for him to do. Or something to jog some memory from this world, this version of Eddie, to let him know the kinds of things he does during times like these. 

Which, Eddie supposes, happens every day. 

God, he feels so worthless. Walking around to Mike, he grabs a rock - smooth and round - and says, “Can I help?” 

Mike smiles broad and, sweeping a hand out to the pit he’s working on, he says, “Be my guest.” 

They work together, Mike digging into the ground and Eddie stacking a smile row of stones around the perimeter. As he circles around, finding large rocks with black soot on the edges, he has to ask, “So, is this whole... _thing,_ something we do...like, daily?” 

Mike chuckles. “Yeah. Pretty much. We have snares all over in the woods for rabbits or foxes or squirrels. If we catch too much we smoke it out for later. Then we have to cover up the pit and everything so nobody will take over. Set up new snares. That kind of thing.” 

“Fuck. All that? All the time?” Eddie asks, completing the circle with a lumpy rock and, as Mike stabs his knife into the dirt, joins him in filling the base with dried leaves and twigs nearby. 

“Hey, the world ended. Nobody said it’d be _fun.”_

* * *

By noon, they have the rabbit in chunks, skewered on a spit, up over the high curling flames. The sun is hot and high, they’re slouched around the flames, passing around a small pile of dried fish tied in a kerchief, chewing quietly, and Eddie’s still taking in the soberness, watching the juices fall from the hunks of meat, when Beverly stands. She holds onto her knees, the rabbit’s dried blood rubbing off onto her jeans. “Well. I think I’m gonna get started,” She says. “Who has the soap?” 

“That’s usually Eddie’s thing,” Richie says, stabbing at the fire with a knotted stick. 

“Do you mind, Eds?” Beverly turns to Eddie, holding out her bloodstained hands. “I don’t want to get your stuff all dirty.” 

Numbly, Eddie reaches into his backpack. There’s a rolled change of clothes, a straight-razor, and a bottle of water in the main pocket. In the front, wrapped up in a dingy wrinkled Ziplock bag, there’s a fading bar of white soap. He hands it over to Beverly. “Um. What is this for?” 

“Cleaning, you know?” Beverly says while - from the corner of his eyes - Eddie can see Richie lean forward and rest his chin on his knees. And, maybe Eddie’s looking a certain hapless way about it, because she shrugs and turns around to walk towards the shore. When she gets there, she throws her clothes up over her head and Eddie turns back to the fire. 

His mind is running a million miles a minute. “Wait,” He says, turning back to Mike and Richie. “So, we bathe once a week? In lakewater? That’s ridiculously unsanitary.” 

“Only in the summer,” Mike says. “In the winter we can heat up the snow. But carting the water from here to the library to boil it is a little…” 

“We’ve tried that, It’s a pain in the ass,” Richie interjects. “I’m gonna go jump in the big lake-tub, too.” 

And Richie runs to his feet, hobbling over his shoes and throws his clothes off as he goes. Eddie can feel his face get hot, and he casts his gaze back down to the dirt. He can hear Richie scream, _‘Geronimo!’_ and the splash of water. 

Eddie doesn’t really understand why his legs feel a little like jelly as he and Mike walk over to the shore themselves. Nobody’s looking at him. He’s slower, standing on the fringes as he undresses, rolling up his clothes beside his backpack. 

Over his shoulder, his three friends stand in the water. Beverly’s running her hands through her hair, dipping under and bobbing up. The water runs off Mike’s back and his muscles. He carries this bizarre mix of firm and malnourished, rubbing the bar of soap along his arms, scrubbing with his nails. Beside him, Richie’s pulling on his ear lobe, hitting on the opposite side of his head. He’s not wearing his glasses, his lips are strained in a soft wince. Eddie catches himself before his eyes can scope over Richie any further, down into the water, and the way the high noon sun beats down, and makes him shine. 

Instead, Eddie slides down into the water. He’s careful with his wounded leg. There are billions of bacteria in lake water. He has a partially open wound. But it’s still probably better than letting it fester with a week’s worth of sweat and grime. Hopefully, there’s antibiotics somewhere among their stashed supplies in the library. And, if not that, hopefully, the Grey Goose will eliminate the need for them. 

The water’s freezing, and Eddie has to wince at the cold. He keeps his back turned from his friends. There’s no reason for him to, he knows. He shouldn’t feel awkward about this. It’s Richie, and Mike, and Bev. Back when they were kids, they used to swim in this quarry for hours in nothing but their underwear. 

And just because they’re not kids anymore and just because they’re all naked, shouldn’t make anything more awkward than it was way back then. 

They’re _bathing_ , for fuck’s sake. He’s forty years old. He’s been in locker rooms. This should not be a big fucking deal. He shouldn’t feel squeamish. These are his friends. 

And, besides, apparently, this version of Eddie does this shit on a weekly basis. 

But, still, his eyes cast over and Richie’s lathering the bar of soap in his hair, and Eddie sits down further in the water. The sandy mud hits his knees, and there’s literally no way he’s going to feel like he’s actually getting clean after that. 

“Hey,” Beverly’s voice sounds off behind him, sudden and shocking him from his thoughts. 

Eddie jumps. The water splashes around them, and, when it settles, Beverly’s looking at him with a soft smile. She holds the bar of soap on her palm. 

“Didn’t mean to scare you. Sorry,” She says. “I just thought you might want this.” 

“Oh, thanks.” Eddie takes the soap from her and stands, acutely aware of the cold water smashing against his ribs, the mud on his legs. 

Beverly crouches in the water. She’s keeping the line of the water up on her sternum as she treads the water, and Eddie’s doing his best to focus on the lather he’s working into his hands. 

“This must seem really weird to you,” Beverly says after a beat. “Coming from a place with running water and private showers and things.” 

“Yeah, I guess ‘weird’ is a word for it.” 

“You’re taking it really well, though. I just wanted to say something.” 

Eddie nods, spreading the suds all over his body and into his hair. Bar soap isn’t the best for the scalp, but he suspects a bit of a shortage of _Head & Shoulders _in this world. “Well, I don’t really have much of a choice.” 

“How do you mean?” 

“Well. I’m kind of stuck here, aren’t I?” 

“We all are,” Beverly says, not unkindly. “You just have some extra catching up to do.” 

Turning away to rinse off, Eddie rolls his eyes. It’s not the same fucking thing, and she knows it. But lest he say anything else, he scrubs at his skin and hair and turns back to her, ready to return the soap before he rinses off. He’s about to say something, he knows he is, but finds his mouth clamping shut at the movement behind Bev, a few meters off. 

Behind her, Richie’s wading towards Mike, water pyramiding a soft wake around on his belly. The entire lower half of his face is covered with white suds, lathered down to his neck. He's holding an open straight-razor. The blade reflects the light. He holds the black handle towards Mike. “Help a guy out, Mike?” 

“Sure,” Mike says, and he takes the handle of the blade in one hand, and wraps the other around the back of Richie’s neck. 

Eddie watches, swallowing an unexplainable lump down in his throat, as Richie mumbles something and Mike smiles as he tips Richie’s head up to the sky. The blade glides up one side of Richie’s neck, cleaning a smooth patch of skin behind the razor’s track. 

“What are they doing?” Eddie asks. It’s obvious, but he’s caught himself staring and he can sense Beverly, can formulate whatever question _she_ might have. So he had to beat her to the punch. 

Beverly looks over her shoulder. She spares him the literal answer, and plunges right into the actual question: the _why_ of the matter. “Oh. We don’t really have mirrors out here, so things like shaving need to be a little collaborative. You usually do Rich, though.” 

“Why?” Eddie wonders if his heartbeat could send waves through the lake. And, well, that’s absurd. But, nevertheless, he coughs and tacks on. “I mean, why even bother shaving? It’s the fucking apocalypse.” 

Beverly waves her hand through the water, making small trails around her fingertips. “You know,” Her voice sounds sad, and a little distant. Eddie has no idea where she is as she continues, but it’s not here in the quarry, “We don’t get a lot of chances to do regular things. And this is one of the few things we can still do that isn’t about survival. You guys shave. I cut my hair. We all read and play checkers and things when we can. It’s about making the little things add up.” 

“I guess I can see that.” Eddie nods. Beverly’s looking at him, sympathetic hand on his bare shoulder. Behind her, the razor slides along Richie’s jaw bone, over on his chin. Sharp and smooth movements. Mike mumbles something, again. And Richie smiles. Mike has to pull the razor back. 

Beside Eddie, Beverly says, “Do you want me to help you clean up your beard? It might help you feel normal.” 

Eddie wracks his eyes back to Beverly and nods through a thick swallow. “Sure. That sounds good.” 

He grabs his own straight razor from the backpack. He lathers up his face, and placing all his trust in Beverly, hands her the blade. 

“I’ll need scissors first,” Beverly mutters, wading over to the backpack herself. She knows where the scissors are, better than Eddie does without the muscle memory. The water billows around her as she moves. It pulls back the murky curtain around her and Eddie doesn’t know if his embarrassment comes from modesty, or the fact that this is Beverly, who he’s known his whole life - or, at least some version of her, that is. Or, maybe it’s that - in his own lifetime, he’d _forgotten_ all about her and all his friends for so long that this gesture seems so... _off._

Sure. If he focuses intently, he can conjure up the image of the four of them (seven, even, if he goes back far enough) passing around the same bar of soap. Eddie and Stanley had even made a big fuss about it, back when this first became the norm. But, it’s still alien. Still removed.

Maybe there are some standards that, no matter how Eddie can comprehend that this is how he lives now, this is how this version of himself had lived for five years, he can’t break from it. Standards he’d set in because of luxuries like running water and electricity and privacy. 

Beverly stands in front of Eddie, now, water billowing around her and prompts Eddie to look up. He can hear Mike and Richie behind them, murmuring with one another. The sky is blue and peppered with fluffy white clouds. The sun is set high and a buttery yellow. 

Beverly’s hands are up on his face. She has a pair of scissors in her hand and she snips at the length of the wiry hairs on his jaw and chin. Tailoring it down to a centimeter or so, he figures - judging from the distance between the scissors and his face. 

He hopes she won’t clip a chunk onto his lip. 

“I don’t have one of these back in my world,” He mutters, careful to move as little as possible. He rolls over the insanity of the words spilling from his lips, although, he’ll have to get used to them. 

Beverly smiles, soft and with her lips pressed together. “You used to complain a lot about how stubble made your face feel like velcro in the in-between days. Stanley finally asked you why you didn’t just grow it out. Richie seconded the idea.” 

“There was a vote on my facial hair?” Eddie blinks up at the sky. 

Beverly hums. “Oh, not really. I was just...wondering if there was a way that you could remember that day.” 

Eddie shrugs. Honestly, he probably could. The images come fast and fleeting, and he has to focus and think. They’re disjointed and difficult to discern. But he can get names and make sense of things, sometimes. Like how he knew about his business, back in the last world. Or, how he had the image of the invasion yesterday. It’s vague and incomplete, and he doesn’t know how much good it’d do to conjure up something so specific and small. So, instead, he asks, “Why?” 

“No reason. I’m just trying to feel out how much of a connection you have to this life.” 

“You and me both.” 

Beverly smiles again. She puts the scissors down on the rock beside them, and pulls out the straight razor. “I’m gonna start cleaning these up. Hold still.” 

There’s something paralyzingly helpless about this. No matter how tenderly Beverly moves the skin on Eddie’s neck taut, how lightly the razor grazes along his skin, he’s still standing there, in the freezing water, naked, while someone else has a blade up against his throat. 

Nevermind that that “someone else” is Beverly. He might not have lived in this world for very long, he might not have the same history here as with everyone else, but it’s still Beverly. He’d trust her with his life. She’s more capable, in any world, than he ever was. 

It’s not that Eddie doesn’t trust her to not put on too much pressure, to tidy up his beard with artfulness that will avoid any knicks or scars. He does. It’s only that - right now, he’s here - completely exposed and relinquishing any and all control. 

And, sure, control is all relative. Back home, Eddie didn’t even like to sit in the passenger’s seat in the car. (Myra never minded.) But, he supposes when the entire world turns upside down, no matter how you might try and cling to something normal, you can never completely get that normal sense of control back. 

Beverly steps away, dipping the razor blade into the water to wash away the stubble and soap. “All right, Eddie, you’re all set.” 

Eddie washes his face, spitting out lakewater, and can feel the trim edges around his face, the smooth skin around its fringes. And, weird as it seems, Beverly was right. It helps. No matter how small or nonfunctional, it’s something composed in this whirlwind of chaos. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've been here since chapter one, I just wanted to bring a few things to your attention. The rating is now M instead of E (I've decided to tone down some of the violence/gore. The warnings still apply, but they'll be a little less graphic.) and the chapter number has gone from 12 to unknown. This is the most serialized thing I've written in a long while, and although 12 was my best guess, I figured I better adjust it so that I can meet expectations in the best possible way. 
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading this fic and leaving such great feedback. I appreciate it all immensely! <3


	6. Chapter 6

By the time the sun starts to dip below the cliff edges of the quarry, Eddie is exhausted. Their old clothes, blood, and sweat scrubbed off, hang on low tree branches. Mike and Richie have set up a few new snares for tomorrow. They have a small line of fish strung up on a line to smoke later, and - with the chill in the dusky air, they pass around chunks of rabbit. It’s gamey and maybe a little overcooked, but Eddie - frankly - would rather that than raw meat. 

It sticks in between his teeth, but - after barely eating all day - he can’t help it, he nearly inhales it. 

“Whoa there, Eddie,” Richie says, wrapping himself up in his clean shirt. “You’re like a fucking vacuum.” 

Eddie coughs, choking for a second on the hunk of meat. “You’re not funny, man.” 

“Hey, the punchline’s only as good as the setup.” 

Eddie makes a big show of rolling his eyes. It’s only now that he realizes he hasn’t really had much of an opportunity to speak with Richie today. And, when they’re all together as a group, Richie’s been...quiet. Weirdly quiet. Eddie looks over to him, and the way he’s poking at the fire with a knobby stick. 

It’s fucking weird. When was the last time Richie didn’t have a random comment for any empty space? 

Maybe it’s an apocalypse thing. 

Trying not to think about it, Eddie turns back to the rest of the group. “It’s getting dark. Shouldn’t we be heading back to the library?” 

Mike shrugs. “There’s no rush. We know our way back. Sometimes it’s safer to come back at night, anyway. Most people are just looking out for themselves, but if we have extra food...it won’t just be Bowers and his gang that we need to worry about.” 

“Shit,” Eddie shakes his head. Mike’s so calm, the way he’s talking about it, like it’s normal. Though, Eddie supposes, it is. “Fucking bleak.” 

Beverly sighs, sifting a handful of sand between in her fist. “You know, back when this first started, we were just  _ waiting  _ for things to get boring. Ben would talk about building us all a big house somewhere in the wilderness. Obviously, that didn’t work out. But it’s nice to remember…” 

“Maybe somewhere out there we did,” Mike offers. “In some other world.” 

“A lot of fucking good that does.” 

“Richie,” Beverly warns, the  _ beep-beep ( _ or, well,  _ honk-honk  _ in this world) ready on her lips, but Richie looks up and his eyes are far away and the fire reflects the wet off his eyes, flashing from his lenses. 

“ _ What?”  _ He says, tone dark. Something’s snapped behind his eyes. He’s frowning and getting louder and his knuckles are straining on the stick as he stabs into the flame. “Are we supposed to be throwing a fucking party because in some  _ other  _ world Ben and Bill and Stanley are still alive? In  _ some other world,  _ we have the right Eddie? And fuckin’ electricity and jobs and whatever the fuck else is out there - somewhere else? Sure. Great. L’chaim -- over there! Excuse me if I’m not jizzing all over the idea that some version of us is happy. That doesn’t do us any good  _ here! _ ” 

“That’s not what we’re doing,” Beverly says. 

“Yeah? Is that why you two fucking dropped the bomb that ‘Oh yeah, Eddie’s probably dead and that’s why  _ this  _ Eddie’s here! Now, la de dah, let’s just act like everything’s fucking fine!’” 

“Hey,” Eddie doesn’t mean to raise his voice, but Richie’s is on the brim of the valley around them. It’s almost shaking the trees. “I didn’t exactly choose this, either!” 

“You also didn’t watch Bill and Stanley and Ben die right in  _ fucking front of you!  _ You didn’t see Georgie get vaporized into a bunch of fucking dust. And you’re not the Eddie who threw the gun out of Bill’s mouth after that. You don’t even remember that you did that, do you?” 

Eddie can’t help it. Maybe it’s the glare. Maybe it’s the heat or the lack of calories from the day, but he speaks up. “My life wasn’t a fucking walk in the park, dipshit! Do the words ‘demon clown’ mean fucking anything to you?!” 

“No. They don’t. And that’s my fucking point!” Richie shakes his head and throws his stick into the flames. “Bottom line: you’re not the same Eddie. That Eddie fucking  _ died  _ yesterday in a fucking pharmacy right in front of me and I…” He chokes and his shoulders shake. His breath quivers. “I didn’t even fucking notice!” 

Eddie has to resist the urge to reach out. It won’t help. It’ll probably make things worse. Richie fumes on.

“And all three of you are sitting around and acting like that doesn’t even matter! And - fucking  _ why?  _ Because there are other worlds where we’re happy? That’s fucking dumb.” 

“We’re just trying to make the best of a bad situation, Rich,” Mike says, air of finality crushing into the moment. 

They sit, then. The fire crackles around them and the sky is red streaked with pink. There’s nothing else but heaviness pressing down on Eddie’s shoulders. It’s gravity. It’s the darkness that’s about to descend. And - again - just like everything else here, there’s nothing to do but wait. 

* * *

It isn’t long until they douse the fire. They spread the rocks around on the beach, covering the firepit with dirt to hide their setup. And then, wordlessly, the anger floating up over their heads, permeating around them, between their bodies, they walk back into the woods. 

The darkness covers the underbrush. Shadows are long and menacing, but the moon is full overhead. Pale white light falls between the leaves, and they walk. Quietly. 

And, now that Eddie knows where he’s going, from the quarry to the library, he doesn’t need to follow them to the letter. Hiking up his backpack to his shoulders, Eddie drags his feet. It’s been a while, they’re in through the thick of the forest, quietly hiking from one end of the woods to the other. 

It’s heavy and it’s infuriating, and Eddie can’t  _ help  _ any of this. He isn’t responsible. 

But, maybe, there’s a part of him that gets it. And so, when he’s a reasonable few paces behind Mike and Bev on the trek, he pulls at Richie’s elbow. “Hey, Rich, can I talk to you?” 

“It’s getting dark, Eddie,” He whispers, dodging his eyes. 

“We can multitask.” 

Richie bites his cheek but waves his hand out in front of him joylessly. He still seems angry but...not  _ at  _ Eddie. Or, at least Eddie hopes he isn’t. Richie sighs and says, “Ze floor is yours, monsieur.” 

Eddie isn’t even sure where he’s going with this, but holding his backpack by the shoulder straps, he walks on - slowly, with Bev and Mike getting smaller ahead of them while they shuffle their feet. “You do know that it’s not your fault that you didn’t notice when I...or, well, he…”  _ God, this is fucking bizarre to process.  _ “Well. Don’t blame yourself. There’s no way you could’ve noticed, right?” 

“I should’ve.” 

“Why?” 

“We’re close.” Richie shrugs. He sighs. “Or, well, we  _ were.  _ I dunno, man.” 

“I guess we all are, huh? After, what, three years of just the four of us?” 

“No. That’s not what I meant,” Richie shakes his head. He’s blinking and, his eyes are wide and he’s a little far away. 

“Then what do you mean?” 

But Richie, looking over his shoulder down at Eddie, changes the subject. Just, right the fuck out of nowhere, he asks, “Are we, in your world? Close, I mean.” 

Eddie can’t help his exhale. “Well...we kind of forgot all about Derry for years. All seven of us, not just you and me. But, then, it all came flooding back in Derry and...yeah. We were.” 

They walk, slowly, forward. Richie’s hands dig deep into his pockets. Eddie hikes up his backpack again, if only for something to do with his body. And they walk forward, the night pressing on. It’s slow, and although Mike and Bev are still visible up ahead, Eddie knows they can make their way back to the library, if only in muscle memory. 

Directions. What can Eddie say? They stick. 

And Eddie doesn’t know what he’s doing when he opens his mouth again. He isn’t thinking about what he’s saying when he says, “You remember the world I was in before this one? Not  _ mine,  _ but the one with the car crash?” 

“You mentioned it.” 

“I think we were having an affair.” Eddie can’t help it. It just spilled out. 

Richie blinks. “What?” 

“Yeah. You were talking about how I was planning to leave my wife. And you seemed pissed that I hadn’t and kept on mentioning some ‘last time.’ I don’t know. It was weird.” He stops talking. Clamps himself shut and stares at his feet. 

“Wow,” Richie mutters softly. And then, a soft laugh bubbles in the back of his throat. “That version of you seems like a douchebag.” 

It’s not that Eddie can exactly  _ disagree.  _ But he sucks in his cheeks and bumps into Richie’s shoulder as they walk. “Hey, you were the one sleeping with a married man.” 

“The married man being you _.”  _

“Okay, fine. I’m the pot, you’re the kettle.” 

“No,” Richie shakes his head. But he’s smiling, softly, and he bumps Eddie’s shoulder back. “I mean, it’s shitty but I’m pretty sure the douchier thing is going back on, like, vows.” 

“Okay, okay, fine,” Eddie says, holding his arms out. It’s not something he wants to think about. 

Back in his own life, he’d occasionally get the urge to get into his car and drive away from his apartment in Queens, away from Myra, and his life and the claustrophobic walls in his office, and just stare out at the open road. Sure. He’d thought about driving away and never coming back. 

But an affair? That was a line he’d never dreamed of crossing in his own life. And, there was another version of him, that not only had an affair but had one with  _ Richie.  _

Richie Tozier. One of his oldest friends (although, Eddie has to remind himself, not in that lifetime. So, that didn’t  _ count).  _ A man. 

It’s so far removed from something Eddie could ever see himself doing, but - since he’d gone and done it in another lifetime - he supposes he’s capable. 

Maybe, if he made two or three different choices in his own lifetime, maybe he would’ve done the same. 

(Though, well, not with  _ Richie,  _ . He couldn’t’ve. He wouldn’t’ve.) 

And it’s a little frightening. 

“Anyway,” Eddie coughs. “I just wanted you to know. In case…” 

“In case what?” 

Eddie shrugs. “Just in case that’s something you’d want to know.” 

But Richie looks pale in the moonlight and he gives off a dry half-chortle, he dances to the side as though he’s tripping on his feet or doesn’t want to catch some contagion. Eddie wouldn’t blame him either way. 

_ But, for what?  _

“I don’t, actually.” He says softly. “Okay, we’re having some torrid affair in one world. We grew up together in another. And - hell - maybe we’re even happy somewhere. Great. I’m happy for that version of us. But I lost you  _ here _ . And my brain cannot fucking process it, because you’re here but you’re not  _ you. _ ” 

Eddie nods. It makes as much sense as it can. “Yeah, Rich. I’m sorry about that.” 

It’s stupid how worthless that sounds. How worthless it is. How haded and hopeless Richie is. And he’s sorry about that too. 

And he’s also sorry because he would’ve never imagined that even the world ending could lay someone like Richie Tozier so low. That never even seemed like a possibility. 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Again, mentions of skinning animals for food. Violence.

Eddie has to wonder now, eleven days in, if his own memories are going to fade. Or, if not fade entirely, when he’ll start thinking of this world as his own. When thinking of the quarry, he’ll stop thinking about long summer days splashing and laughing and playing chicken and having breath-holding contests, and start thinking about Beverly standing beside him, making sure he gets it right as he pushes the bounds of his muscle memory. 

That is to say, he’s standing in the shade of the tree. He can hear the water sloshing around on the rocky shore. Mike and Richie are re-digging the firepit like they do every day. And Eddie’s slicing the knife along the soft fur on the rabbit’s middle, sliding the skin from the carcass. He hangs the fur over a low-hanging branch and turns back to the task at hand. 

If he doesn’t think too much about the motions, about how his hands are bloody or how the stench of the animal’s bowels and blood fills his nose, he remembers what he’s doing. He can look back into earlier years - remember that Richie can’t dress the animals because he’ll ralph all over their dinner, how they’d had to use books to learn the ins and outs of dressing their dinner, how Mike is the quickest in setting the traps at night, of smoking the meat for later. How this used to take half the time, separating duties between all seven Losers. 

But, at least Eddie isn’t useless now. 

It’s gross. But he remembers what to do. He  _ can  _ remember, whatever he wants to, but he doesn’t  _ have  _ to. 

He doesn’t have the same luxury with his own life, though. Sometimes, he’ll be lying on his hammock at night, and he can’t help it. He’ll see the leper, nose rotted off, and sickly gasp chasing him away. He remembers the sharp yellow teeth and the rank stench of its breath, bloody sewage. And - even before that - the heavy smog from New York, his job at the insurance firm, the long meetings for hours and hours, that only sufficed to keep him away from the dark weight that’d fall on him at home. 

If he wants to remember anything from this life, he has to try. But these thoughts just kind of sneak up on him. 

Once, lying on the hammock and trying not to let the body odor get to him, he wondered if he could call to mind a memory from the last world he’d been in. There, he could think of long lines of cars, huge lists of celebrity guests, and dark hotel rooms, falling into step at Richie’s side. 

Well. For that, he’s not going to think too hard about that. It’s not going to matter here. Richie made that pretty damn clear a week ago. Though, that’s not to say that Eddie had  _ wanted  _ it to matter. 

He just…

He doesn’t know. It’s bizarre, he thinks, the way these different lifetimes swirl around in him. Most of them hazy and unpredictable, with a few details missed or grayed out, his own much more concrete. And, that doesn’t really matter, because he’s not  _ in  _ his own world. 

And he doesn’t really want to be. 

Not that he wants to be here, sawing through the sinews on a rabbit’s leg, separating the meats and skewing it for the spit. But…

Maybe it just isn’t worth overthinking. 

He’ll just have to focus on the problem at hand. And, right now, for Eddie, it’s pulling through the day to day. For the rest of forever. 

It’s fine. 

He washes his hands in the quarry, with the waning bar soap. The water’s still dirty, but it’s better than nothing - even if all he’s doing is replacing one type of bacteria with another. 

Returning to the smoky dry heat around the fire, Eddie keeps his distance but rejoins the remaining three on the beach. Beverly is sharpening a set of kitchen knives for repurposing. Mike is reconfiguring the rabbit snare, and Richie is busying himself by spinning the rabbit on the spit. 

It’s the same as before, the same as the last eleven days, and if it wasn’t for the semi-constant hunger, or the distorting paranoid feeling rushing through town, looking over their shoulders. 

Inanely, it reminds him of middle school and he doesn’t know if that comes from the fact that he’s with Beverly and Mike and Richie again, or that the cool paranoia overtakes them, eyes peeled for Henry Bowers’ fucking mullet and the pain that might incite. 

Or, in the vein of the alien invasion of this world, for the fear that something otherworldly is coming straight for the jugular.

Curious, and falling on the ground, Eddie busies himself with his backpack. There’s a hole by its straps and he tugs a thick needle through, trying to rethread it, as he asks, “So, I know we have to worry about, you know,  _ people,  _ but what’s the chance of the fuckin’ aliens coming back to finish vaporizing everything?” 

“Don’t know,” Mike says, working in the tiny knots around the noose. “It wasn’t really forecast or anything the first time.” 

Richie snorts. “That’d be fucking hysterical,” He puts on the deep voice of some old-timey radio announcer. “‘And at noon, there’s a warm front coming in and an eighty-four percent chance alien birds’ll swoop in and kill everyone you love, and we’re expecting a light drizzle at night!” 

It might be selfish to think, but at least - as far as this goes - everybody’s the exact same level of clueless. You’d think, with Eddie’s whole multiple-lifetimes-worth-of-memories-thing, that maybe he’d have a better idea what he was dealing with, but - it seems like, per world, he’s limited. 

And, so it goes. Just the same as every other day. It’s not bath night, just yet, but Eddie’s feeling sweaty and prickly, and scrubs at his face with some simmering water.

But, at least, he’s getting used to gamey rabbit. 

Moreover, he’s getting used to  _ this.  _ This world. Beverly had said that he has to belong here. And, maybe, if he gives it a few more weeks, he might. If he can shirk away from his own memories, face up to the fact that none of them were actually worth that much anyway, and catch up with survival…

Well. He’ll survive. Like the squirrels overhead. Or the fish that don’t latch onto their hooks. Or, whatever that was in the bushes (a raccoon?) that night as they climb back up the fire escape to the library. 

Everyone, every  _ thing,  _ is only doing their best. And Eddie’s getting there. He just needs a little more time, a few more memories that he can sort through, and learn the ropes without being so tentative or useless. 

* * *

Eddie jolts awake in the middle of the night, with a boot to his back. He screams in pain and, again, a boot to his nose. Blood, again, in his mouth. Infuriatingly familiar. 

“Don’t make a fucking sound.” 

His vision blurs and he blinks upwards. Tall, sallow in the orange light streaking through the windows, hulks Henry Bowers.

_ How… _

They moved the fucking ladder back up. How did he get  _ in  _ here? 

Eddie yelps in his throat, he's halfway to screaming, and there’s another boot to his face. His nose cracks, pain, and he’s swallowing more blood. 

He blinks. The world fades in and out of focus and he can hear a buzzing in his ears. To his left, Victor Criss holds Beverly’s gun to her temple. Hockstetter has the barbed wire up against Mike’s throat. Huggins swings at Richie’s knees. He doubles over and when Eddie screams, he’s kicked again. 

“What did I say about making a sound?” Bowers screams, kicks Eddie and Eddie, crazed with the pain of it all, spits teeth and blood onto the floor. He’s light-headed. 

“Good.” Bowers cackles and turns to the room. His back is to Eddie. “You shits really deserve what’s comin’ to you, you know. It’s bad enough you’re here, takin’ up perfectly good air, but then you fuckin’ steal from us? Shoot at us? What makes you think you’re so big and strong, huh?” He gets up into Mike’s face, snarling and loud. “This’s been a long fuckin’ time comin’, Mikey boy.” 

Eddie’s dizzy. As his vision doubles and sways, the bottle of Grey Goose rolls under the table. He can’t think, he doesn’t have the time, as he grabs it by the neck and hurls it at Bowers. 

It shatters against his head and he falls. Knocked down. “YOU FUCKIN SHIT!” 

There’s a sound of something hitting, contact like a bunch, and Beverly crumples to the floor, still breathing ragged. The gun is pointed at Eddie now. And Eddie’s still spitting out blood but when he moves to throw something else - he's reaching for a chair - but Hockstetter beats him to it.

Barbed wire in his hands. 

Eddie moves to run. But then there are hands on his neck.

His head jerks. 

Something snaps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp.


	8. Chapter 8

Eddie's lungs are full of smoke. He drops to the floor. His head is pounding. He’s hacking and coughing. There’s a splintered door frame overhead. The air is clearer down on the floor, but it’s still hot as hell. The curling flames rise and crackle around him. He squints through the black smoke. He can make out walls. A burning spider plant in a corner. Doors splintering on either side of him. 

...a hallway? 

_ Fuck.  _ He’s in a house. It’s on fire. And he has no time to sift through memories for a floor plan. He hopes he’s treaded through this hallway enough for his body to know the way out. 

_ Fuck. Fuck fuck fucking fuck.  _

Eddie crawls, down on the floor. His hand slides on the carpet and smarts. Sometime before he came here, he must have burnt it. He hisses through his teeth. It immediately turns into a coughing fit and Eddie can’t breathe. 

He’s fucking lightheaded. 

But gritting his teeth together, he crawls forward. Down the hall. Around a corner. Down the stairs. 

There’s too much smoke. It’s too hot on his face. Black and thick and puffing everywhere. His eyes burn. Flames everywhere. The carpet’s ignited and Eddie has to descend backward. He’s praying he isn’t going to crawl directly in the flame. His hand fucking hurts. He can't breathe. 

When he turns around at the bottom of the stairs - there’s the front door, framed with flame and smoke. The fire rages on the curtains, the carpet, scorching the walls. Eddie keeps his head down and moves to the front door. Brisk. He’s feeling sleepy. He’s gonna pass out for sure. 

When he touches the doorknob, the pain smarts, but he pushes on anyway. 

And the cold night air hits him - fresh breeze rushing through his lungs. He coughs again. He stumbles to his feet.

There’s the vague cluster of silhouettes ebbing and pulsing at the end of the driveway, clustered around the mailbox. A collective of shadows moving in some insular struggle. Eddie stumbles to his feet. He loses his balance and the world spins, but he staggers towards the mass. 

One struggling silhouette breaks away and comes running -- and that’s when Eddie recognizes a barefoot Richie rushing towards him. 

“ _ Eddie!”  _ He runs to him crying big streaking tears. Eddie falls in Richie’s arms and Richie’s holding him, gasping, “Oh, Jesus -- holy  _ fuck,  _ Eddie!” 

Eddie coughs and hacks and stumbles and allows Richie to hold him as he’s trembling. 

And there’s another hand on his shoulder, and a softer, ‘ _ Shit--”  _

He turns and sees…

Stanley Uris. He has soot on his nose. And he has soft creases in his face, unlike Eddie's seen him before, but he’s recognizable and tears break out on his cheeks, too. All the signs of life, right in front of him. And, most importantly: Stanley’s alive. Fucking alive. 

Holy shit. 

But Richie swivels to Stanley, though, not at all amazed by the miracle in front of him. He frowns and barks, “What the  _ fuck  _ were you thinking _ ,  _ Stanley?!” 

Stanley sniffs away his tears and, with a soft wheeze says, “That you were gonna run right back into a burning building if I wasn’t holding you back.” 

Eddie, limp and coughing, sputters out, “Why the hell would you do that? That would’ve been really fucking stupid, Richie!” 

Richie frowns, but he’s rubbing soothing circles on Eddie’s back and he says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gang up on me why don’t both of you?” 

The final portion of the silhouetted mass joins them. A woman. She’s blonde and pretty and Eddie’s never seen her before in his lifetime. She’s holding a small fluffy dog and tears are falling down her cheeks too. “Thank goodness you’re okay. That’s everyone,” She says weakly, holding the animal close to her chest. 

Eddie’s still coughing as sirens bubble up from the distance and grow louder by the second, made staccato by the pounding in Eddie’s ears. The fire truck swerves onto the street, skidding up to the curb. The firefighters rush to the house, hoses brandished. And then, more sirens and the ambulance reaches them. EMTs sit the four of them down, taking their blood pressure and checking their heartbeat and, to Eddie, she frowns. 

“We need to take you to the hospital and monitor your vitals.” 

“What?” 

“It’s gonna be fine,” She smiles, removing the blood pressure cuff from his arm. “We’ll get you some oxygen and some fluids and get you going. Lie back on the stretcher, please.” 

And Eddie’s coughing and shaking his head. But, he still feels lightheaded. 

As he’s getting hauled back into the ambulance, Richie runs over - snapping out of his blood pressure cuff. “I need to go with him.” 

“Sir, please--” 

“I’m his husband.” 

The EMT chews on the side of her cheek. “Okay. Fine. Get in.” 

_ Husband?  _ Eddie blinks. Why the hell would Richie automatically go to  _ that?  _ Just to get the go-ahead to ride in the ambulance with him? To sit with him in the hospital? 

Okay. That’s actually kind of nice. 

Eddie forgot, in the midst of everything that’s been happening - from the demon clown to the apocalypse to now- how  _ kind  _ Richie can be when he wants to be. 

And, that aside, at least Eddie isn’t alone. It just feels...maybe, a bit  _ much.  _ He rolls back onto the stretcher. An oxygen mask snaps around his head and his eyes flicker shut. He breathes. The oxygen is cool. It tastes funny. 

The EMT checks his pulse and writes things down, and on the other side, Richie, with his glasses smoke-smudged, rubs his thumbs in little circles around Eddie’s wrist. 

Dressing the burnt hand, a stinging sterile wet cloth sweeping over his palm, the EMT asks the expected questions: Other than his hand, does he feel any pain anywhere? No, he doesn’t. Can he breathe? Better with the oxygen. And then she asks what medications he’s taking and Eddie realizes that he can’t answer. He tries to reach back into his memories, see his medicine cabinet, but the only thing he can conjure up of this house is the flames, the thick walls of smoke. And so, he stammers, he blinks, and  _ tries  _ to answer - he has the laundry list, back from his own life, and back in the first one he stumbled into, but  _ here... _ maybe it’s all the same… 

But, since it’s always better to be safe than sorry with medication, he sputters out, muffled through the oxygen mask, “I’m not sure.” 

The EMT makes a note on her computer. Shit. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything and spared himself from the tests for blunt-force trauma. 

That’s when Richie speaks up. “He’s taking Duloxetine. I think it’s like...thirty milligrams once a day.” 

“Anything else?” 

Eddie braces himself and waits for the list. 

But Richie shakes his head. “He takes Zyrtec in the spring for the pollen, but no.” 

There has never been a time in Eddie’s life that this part goes by so quickly. He has to gape. His mask fogs over with his breath, and he lies back, listening to the outside world spin by. 

This is so fucked up. The thought enters his brain as the paramedic wraps a blood pressure cuff around his arm again, and squeezes it tight. The whiplash is too quick, from the last world to this one. He’d just been in the Derry library, trapped and left to contend with Henry Bowers and his gang. He’d just had his neck snapped like a twig. 

And, what’s worse, he has no idea how this ended for Richie and Bev and Mike. They’re fighters, he knows that much. But it’s hard to do something with weapons pointed directly at you. 

Realistically speaking, it couldn’t've been more than thirty seconds more in that world before...

_ Shit.  _ Eddie blew it. He fucking blew this. He’d had a moment to seize the moment and if he’d just done something differently _ ,  _ maybe they could’ve gotten away. And, hell, maybe they  _ did  _ get away. 

But, maybe they didn’t. 

And maybe it’s all Eddie’s fault that they didn’t. 

Eddie has no way to know. And there’s nothing he can do to change that. He has no idea how to get back to that world, or if that’s even possible. Or if he could do anything to change it. 

He can’t help but think back to that dark place, the place where the different lives and versions of Eddie span out like a spider’s web, glowing with every contingency, every option. 

Is there a version of Eddie, somewhere in that apocalyptic nightmare, that gets out of that library? Could he have? 

He should have fucking done something different. Something to change this. Something to fucking help Richie and Bev and Mike get away from Bowers and his gang. 

Every time Eddie tries to do something, people fucking die. No matter the version of the world, proactivity means nothing more than pain. 

He’s exhausted. This is bullshit, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Breathing heavily through his mask, he lies back on the stretcher and - just to cut himself a fucking break - closes his eyes and gives in to the exhaustion. 

* * *

Eddie wakes up in the hospital, still breathing clean air. He hears his EKG, steadily bleeping. The cannula coils around his face, and the needles pinch his arm. He blinks, and - sitting there, in a plastic chair pushed up to the bed, Richie scrambles to lean his forearms on Eddie’s hospital bed. 

Rolling his head beside the stiff pillows, Eddie coughs, ineffectual. Weak, he says - more of a whimper than anything else - “ _ Richie?”  _

“Yeah, what’s up, buddy?” Richie says, face long and -- 

Familiar. So familiar. 

Eddie’s heard this before. He’s seen this look on Richie’s face before. Way before. In his own life - down in the sewer, bleeding out - 

Back then, he’d said,  _ I fucked your mother,  _ and can’t bring himself to remember or reconsider why. 

But now, he asks, “What happened?” 

“To the house? Still smoldering. Probably an electric fire but we won’t know for sure for a little while.” Richie says. “Daisy’s at Ben's and he's gonna take her to the vet tomorrow. Stan and Patty got cleared by the EMT and are en route. The house is extra crispy, but we’re okay.” 

Eddie sighs and chews on his lip. “You...you weren’t actually going to run back in, were you?” 

“I mean...I was kind of panicking, Eddie. You were in there for a while.” 

“You can’t fucking do that shit, Richie. Don’t get yourself killed because of me.” Eddie says. In the back of his mind, thinking - if he hadn’t warped into this body, in this world--

And if Stanley hadn’t been holding Richie back…

Richie might be the one in this hospital bed. Or worse. 

Maybe Eddie’s tone is sharp, and he’s anticipating some kind of retort, something snappish and quick, but Richie only smiles at him, leaning on his elbows. It’s bright, beneath the soot on his nose and the singe on the tips of his hair. “I love you,” he says.

Eddie’s EKG jolts and blips a new rhythm, a higher speed. Richie’s brows furrow as he looks up. It isn’t fast enough to get the nurses in, but Eddie can feel it in his chest. 

And, maybe it’s the four lifetimes worth of memories, buried deep in him. Maybe it’s the smoke in the brain. But, it’s nice, hearing that in Richie’s voice. It’s different, wildly so than every other time that Eddie’s heard those three words. It doesn’t feel like sugar under his gums, it’s plain and bold and charming as shit and -- before Eddie realizes it, he’s smiling. 

It’s shocking, but...it feels good to hear that. 

Now that he’s out of the fire, out of fight-or-flight, he can dip back into his mind here. He has a vague image, somewhere in his head, standing in front of a dish rack, drying plates while Richie washes and splashes him with dirty sudsy water. He can see the Fountains of Bellagio, feel Richie’s elbow leaning on his shoulder. The water sprays and dances as Cher believes in a thing called love. He sees a simple draped archway in his periphery, Richie smiling right at him, glasses clean and tie askew on his throat. The Eddie of his memory looks to his left, and Ben Hanscom’s saying, ‘ _ I now pronounce you married. Go on and kiss your husband.’  _

Oh.

...oh shit. 

Well, apparently when Richie told the EMT they were married, he wasn’t full of shit. 

… _ how  _ on earth did this happen? 

But he isn’t getting answers for that. Only a full complete feeling of affection as his memory watches Richie feeding giraffes at the Baltimore Zoo and runs away when he tries to wipe his gross giraffe-slobbery hands on Eddie’s face. Another of them sitting quietly together after Eddie gets off the phone with his mother in a rage, stewing and steaming and waiting out the waves of emotion. Of them and all their friends filling up the whole Derry Townhouse for the Losers Club Reunions, and seeing everyone alive and well. Eddie can remember listening to Richie’s radio show on the way home from work. Eddie can remember his hand, tight-fisted on the cool metal of a headboard. Richie’s legs are wrapped up around Eddie’s hips, and both of his hands grasping not to the headboard, but to Eddie’s wrists.

Outside of the memory, Eddie’s breath hitches. 

His hands have always been on the small side. He’d been plagued with skinny wrists, but - sliding back into the memory for curiosity’s sake - he could swear he’d never felt bigger than when Richie was clinging to him like a climbing rope. 

And they are bare and licking into each other’s mouth, frantic with hot breaths, and Eddie’s free hand is curled around Richie’s...

The EKG bleeps faster and Eddie yanks himself away from the memory. 

Taking a moment to assess, Eddie takes a deep breath. Richie gapes at him, leaning forward and so affected that it hurts to look. “Seriously - are you okay?” 

“I’m fine, Rich,” Eddie says just to make the ache go away. “Gimme a second.” 

The fact that this Eddie and this Richie have sex isn’t the surprising part. They’d been screwing in at least one of the other worlds Eddie lived through. And, besides, they’re married here. He knows that there are certain obligations that go into a marriage. 

No, the surprising part was the exciting jelly-kneed feeling welling up in him at the memory, the nervy fluttering down in his gut. It wasn’t an obligation, not then. 

Nevermind that the jelly-kneed fluttering is, within Eddie’s lifetime and memories, completely alien. 

But, the thing is, this is more than just a one-off situation now. If Eddie was with Richie in one place, and only one, maybe that’d be a fluke. A matter of statistics. But this...this is turning into a pattern. 

...what was it the last Richie had said to him? They were close? Could that possibly mean… 

Maybe Eddie needs to stop thinking about it like this and start to think logistically.

After the hospital is done pumping him with oxygen and checking his vitals, he’s going to have to figure out what to do about all this. Their house might be burning, but the rest of this lifetime stands intact.

He’s going to have to do something about all this. 

With a small sigh, he looks back towards Richie. Richie’s eyes are glistening through his glasses and Eddie instantly feels like a fucking idiot for withdrawing so deep into his mind. “Sorry,” He says because he doesn’t know what else he  _ can  _ say. “I’m here. I’m okay.” 

Richie’s frazzled and brings his lips together and he reaches for Eddie’s hand. Eddie gives it to him. “ I thought you weren’t gonna come out of that house. I heard the alarm and I grabbed Daisy and booked it. By the time I saw you weren’t out there, Stan was already pulling me back towards the road. I thought that you... _ fuck _ . God, I was so fucking scared.” 

Richie’s sitting here, tears streaming at his face, and Eddie doesn’t know what to do about it. So, he does what makes the most sense. He squeezes Richie’s hand in his. 

With his free hand, Richie wipes at his face and coughs with a humorless little laugh. “Well. Anyway, I guess this is what we get for going to bed angry, huh?” 

Eddie has to pull from the memories. They’re still foggy, but with clean air and a moment to think, he can conjure it. The ragged annoyance in his chest. The constriction in his lungs. The way he’d his toothbrush hard against his molars while he fumed loudly. Turning away only to spit into the sink before glowering through the doorway of their en suite bathroom. Richie, who was in the same pajamas he’s wearing now, pacing and yelling back. The back and forth, fueled by some unknown source, angry and harsh until Richie grabs a blanket off their bed and the pomeranian from her sleeping place and huffing that he was going to sleep on the couch tonight. 

Eddie doesn’t even try to remember what it was they were fighting about. Even if all that only happened a few hours before now, it doesn’t matter anyway. 

“I’m not angry,” He says, and tacks on an “Anymore,” just to cover his ass. This doesn’t exactly seem like a world, he can start broadcasting about the whole multiple dimension traveling thing. He doesn’t want to risk it in a place where straight jackets are so accessible. 

“Me neither,” Richie sniffs and adjusts his glasses. “I’m just glad you’re okay.” 

“Well, I just crawled out of a burning building, man. I don’t feel fuckin’  _ great _ .” 

Not even to mention, now that the adrenaline’s coming down, he’d just been fucking  _ murdered  _ \- out of the frying pan and, literally, into the fire. 

(He hopes, even though he knows it’s unlikely, that Mike and Bev and Richie got away from Bowers. That they climbed down the library’s ladder and went to the woods where they could live on rabbits and springwater and learn to be okay again.) 

It’s bleak and it’s distracting. Noticing how Richie’s looking at him, brows down and mouth twisted up into a question mark, Eddie scoots over in the bed and waves Richie in. Richie bounds over, careful on the wires, and twists onto the uncomfortable hospital bed. Eddie hands Richie the remote, mumbling about how he doesn’t care what they watch. While Richie starts flipping through channels on their tiny hospital TV, his chin rests on Eddie’s head. 

He’s warm. All bone and all familiarity. 

While the TV flickers from  _ Full House  _ and  _ Family Matters  _ reruns to the weather and various news stations, Eddie allows himself to think - to try to make sense of all the new information that’s been thrown at him. 

In this world, he’s married. To Richie. They argue and do chores together and share a bed and an en suite bathroom. 

Eddie leans into Richie’s neck and, he smells like smoke but he’s broad and there’s a part of Eddie’s body that intuitively knows where to lean. It’s so easy to rest his hand on Richie’s knee. 

He decided that it’s a concern to be dealt with later. 

Instead, he sinks further into these memories, tries to make sense of the day-to-day in this world. He follows a strand of memory into the workplace, a Cadillac dealership where he has a big office with big windows. It’s far bigger than the office he remembers at the insurance firm, back in his world. He isn’t in the showroom, so he doesn’t have to put on the hard sell, and instead goes over safety precautions and aids in repairs when needed. And - most shockingly - he walks into the office most mornings with an optimistic sense. He doesn’t count down the hours till he’s home. 

He and Richie live with Stanley and Patty, and that much Eddie had already figured before the memory of gathering in a heap in front of the TV to catch the newest episode of the  _ Firefly  _ revival. But, what’s more shocking, is that he and Richie don’t need roommates (and neither do Stanley and Patty), but have them anyway. Just to stay together. 

Eddie doesn’t need to slide into another memory to guess what his mother would think of that. But, he supposes, he figures that this Eddie simply doesn’t care. Maybe this Eddie gave up on trying to please her ghost with the signifiers of upper-middle-class existence - ceramics or nice china or crown molding. 

He pulls back the memory from his wedding. He’s standing next to Richie, facing the small crowd. Standing in a vague semi-circle, not designated to one side or another, are Bill and Bev and Mike and Stanely. Patty stands on the side with a camcorder (apparently, she’d been around for a while in this world). Dr. and Mrs. Tozier sit in the front row, and behind them, there’s maybe a dozen people. Faces Eddie somehow knows are from the dealership, or Richie’s radio station and a few more long-limbed Toziers dot the sparse group. Maybe twenty in total. But Eddie can recall the way he smiled, the lightness in the air. The way, standing there at the altar, Richie took Eddie’s hand and thrust it up in the air, yelling, “ _ I did it!”  _ to the laughter of everyone else on the lawn. And Eddie laughed along through a roll in his eyes and pulled Richie in once again. 

Eddie can recall that, when he kissed Richie then, he almost forgot they were standing right in front of all their friends, coworkers, and a good portion of Richie’s family. It was only the pressure of his mouth and the way he poured out the laughter, the affection, the raw emotion into him. Eddie was split open at the smile on his lips and Richie fit into his. His hand firm against the back of his suit jacket.

Eddie, in his own life, had never been so excited with the prospect of forever.

What comes next, though, Eddie has to blame a slow sort of morbid curiosity. Because, here’s the thing, Eddie was married in his own life. And, not once during his wedding or marriage to Myra had he had a single moment like  _ that,  _ where the love just erupted from his mouth and where he didn’t even care about who was around or what would happen outside of that expression of love. 

Honestly, Eddie hasn’t the faintest idea what he’s going to do about that when he gets out of here. But for now, it’s the most reassuring thing in the world. 

He sits back, curling more into Richie’s chest. The cannula bends but he pays it no mind. The needles itch, but he puts it aside. He lies back and allows himself to feel comfortable. 

On the small TV screen, Steve Urkel has created a mind-reading machine. 

Eddie waits and watches, and he dozes off. 

He wakes up, what feels like a minute later, to a numb feeling in his chest. A tightening from the inside of his left arm. Something hot in his chest. He chokes.  _ Oh... _ oh no. 

“Richie--” 

It’s getting tighter. More painful. He flexes his arm and hisses. The EKG starts to beep, louder and faster. 

“Eddie?!” Richie jumps up from the bed. He runs to the door, screams, “WE NEED A DOCTOR IN HERE!” 

They must’ve already been on the way because there’s a cart rushing in. Doctors and nurses and a defibrillator. 

Richie’s up against the wall, holding onto the chair. “You’ve gotta help him!” 

“Sir, calm down,” A nurse says and it’s distant and 

Eddie’s chest is squeezing, compressing, fucking  _ burning  _ \-- squished. 

It’s textbook symptoms. He inhaled too much fucking smoke. His body’s too stressed. He’s having a heart attack. 

He shakes. It hurts. It  _ fucking  _ hurts, strained, and it’s too much. 

It’s not fair. He never even had a fucking chance here. Not one single goddamn choice. He didn’t even get a moment to… 

The EKG beeps again. Fast, over and over again. Loud and it’s in his ears and then ---

One single long tone. 

  
  



	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Prescription drug abuse. Self-referential homophobic slurs.

Eddie is lying face down on the bathroom floor, hacking a cough into this new life. Vomit sloshes onto the floor between his hands, thick and foul in its solidity. _Shit._ He punches at the tile, ineffectual, the cold smarting on his fist. Uncountable diseases can live in bathrooms, he has vomit congealing on the side of his mouth, and this is, to put it simply, _not good._ He staggers to his feet, he stares, dizzy at himself in the mirror. 

“Could you stop fucking dying for _two seconds?”_ He hisses at his reflection. On the countertop, there’s the thin orange cylinder. Xanax. He shakes the bottle. There’s no rattle. He’s suddenly aware of the three loose white bars on the tile. “Shit.” 

His inhaler is there - ready - on the side of the sink. He doesn’t even think before he grabs it. And it’s not over-medicating - or, at least, he hopes it’s not, because in his own lifetime, his HydrOx had been tap water. It tastes the same, he thinks, as he sticks the mouthpiece between his lips and pulls the trigger. 

As he calms himself, leans against the bathroom sink, and tries to piece together what happened, apart from the obvious _._ Maybe he’s deluding himself, but he has the feeling that this was an accident. A mistake. Something like that. 

He thinks. He hopes. 

There’s a rapping at the door, and Eddie jumps. 

“Eddie? Are you okay? You just ran off.” 

“Uh. Yeah. I’m fine.” Eddie says, splashing water on his face. He cups his hand and swishes away any residual vomit. 

When he opens the bathroom door, he doesn’t recognize the woman on the other end. She has kind, dark eyes and neat braids tied up into a bun. It takes Eddie a long, blinking moment to pull her name from his memory: Kay McCall.

She doesn’t look entirely convinced, but she hands him a small water bottle. “Okay. But this thing starts in fifteen. If you need me to run to the boutique and grab you Pepto, speak now or forever hold your peace.” 

Eddie shakes his head. _This thing?_ She steps away from the bathroom, down the half-hallway into the room. It’s a hotel suite, divided into two. In the living room portion, on the fluffy white carpet, a small array of bodies sits in front of laptops and black binders. Behind them, piled on the wall, a conglomerate of signage and banners, all spelling out, in big blue lettering: **EDWARD KASPBRAK FOR U.S SENATE.**

“Oh fuck.” Eddie whispers it, and it’s mostly for himself, but in the center, a head of curly mousy-brown hair swings up and--- 

“You finally done blowing your guts?” 

“ _Gretta?”_

Eddie blinks while Gretta Keane raises a pencil-thin brow and frowns. She’s wearing a fucking pantsuit, in the center of the small crowd on the couch. 

The last time he saw her...in the last life he knew, she was still permed out for the 80s, in her father’s pharmacy. 

She pulls open a binder and ticks her head towards him. “Haul your ass over here, I’ve got a big update.” 

In a wild stupor, Eddie blinks around the room, eyes darting to the corners as he walks, stiff legged towards Gretta. Nothing good ever came from letting her get this close. 

In the binder, there’s a large laminate photograph of a man, grey and balding, in a stiff suit. There’s writing, scribbled in blue ink, and a stat card on the opposite side. 

“This is the guy you need to schmooze the most. Delbert Grady. He’s our Pfizer guy.” 

“Pfizer?” Eddie echoes. “The pharmaceutical company?” 

Gretta nods. “Yes. I have a good lead that they’re willing to finance, like, the entire fucking campaign.” 

In the corner, Kay leans on the hallway frame. “Um. Isn’t a decent part of Eddie’s whole thing that he’ll - y’know - _not_ side with the big pharmaceutical companies?” 

Gretta glares. “Yeah. Well, if we don’t pull tonight off, we’re pretty much dead in the water, _Kay._ At least I’m fucking doing something. I found a bunch of financiers that can get us to D.C. What are _you_ doing?” 

“I just think,” Kay counters. “That we should stick to the original idea. I nobody wants to listen to the bleeding-heart angry dyke of the campaign but--” 

“Then stop acting the bleeding-heart angry dyke of the campaign.” 

Eddie feels incredibly small. Should he, like.... _say_ something? If they’re his employees, maybe he shouldn’t let that kind of remark slide… 

But Kay throws her hands up, shaking her head and walks back to the countertop. There’s a pot of coffee brewing next to the sink and she pours herself a tall white mug. 

Eddie, for his part, feels like he’s going to be sick. 

Gretta pushes through the binder, showing him picture after picture of old stuffy men, pearled businesswomen, and any edits to his speech. 

And the whole fucking time, his mind is swarming.

There’s an entire history here, and maybe if Eddie tried he could access it, a million little changes in his life that got him here. In politics. Running for senate. In a room full of strangers and Gretta Keane. He looks around the room again, just to make sure he didn’t skip over any familiar faces the first time. 

Gretta’s still talking. On and on, about this or that financier and what to look out for and what hot topics to hit. 

Then, it’s showtime. Gretta and Kay walk down with him in the hall. Kay steps in front of the ballroom, thanks everyone for coming out and makes a warm introduction. Eddie can barely hear the individual words, the whiplash is too intense. 

He follows the teleprompter, once he’s up at the podium. Thanking everyone for their donations and saying that he’ll do everything he can, once elected, to make his senatorial votes count, how happy he is to be back in his home state of Maine, and - finally - to please enjoy the dinner. 

And, because it’s Maine, it’s all seafood. 

Eddie can barely bite through the crabby hors d'oeuvres without his stomach flipping. He can hear the shellfish, somewhere in the back of his mind, clicking and snapping their claws. Crawling around, like insects, on the seafloor. 

Except for the photographs Gretta showed him, Eddie doesn’t recognize anyone in the swaths of suited and dressed bodies, maintaining the small talk, not letting himself overthink or seem off - not with all the attention affixed to him - letting the champagne make his empty stomach woozy all over again.

* * *

The fundraiser clears out by eleven. They did well, apparently. Cracked their goal. The buzz in Eddie’s skull is gone, but his stomach still growls as he’s walking down the hall, back to his hotel room. Once inside, Gretta kettles off details and ideas and, without meaning to, he snaps.   
“Enough! Give me like, five fucking minutes to _process_ something, goddammit.” 

Gretta’s jaw drops and, to Eddie’s other side, Kay snickers. 

Gretta glares and says, “ _Fine._ I’ll leave ya alone for the rest of the night. But when you’re behind in your polls and your next debate sucks, don’t come cryin’ to me.” 

She slams the door on the way out. 

Kay shakes her head and places her binder on the dining table. “So, I assume you’re gonna turn in and I’m good to jet, too?” 

Eddie nods, off-handedly. “I think I need to get some fresh air, actually.” 

He’s talking more to himself, but it’s nice to throw the sentiment out. Give him some accountability. 

“In the middle of the night?” 

Eddie shrugs. Honestly, after living in a fucking apocalypse, a well-lit wealthy district of--whatever the hell city hosts senatorial fundraisers (Portland, maybe?) doesn’t seem all that daunting. 

Because, now that he’s away from the crowd, stepping away from the automatic motions and attempting to stage compelling small-talk, he can let everything finally wash over him. He punches the button in the elevator and, only loosening his tie from around his throat, think about what’s happening. 

For the first time since this all began, since the first version of himself, he hasn’t been thrown into the immediate struggle for survival. And - sure - it’d been since the version of Eddie Kaspbrak who lives in this world, the one running for fucking senate, had thrown a few too many pills down his throat---

It’s a risk that Eddie can understand. There was always a part of him, even in his own life, that wondered if he’d go by way of jaundice and an overworked liver. It was a mistake. One he could see himself making in all honesty. 

And so, maybe, beyond the incredible pressure he seems to be under, with the campaign and Gretta Keane being an apparent staple in his life, it seems as though this might be a life worth living. It’s a five-star hotel. The ballroom was full.

Hell, a doorman lets him out of the hotel and onto the well-lit street. 

Eddie - in this world - is doing all right. 

And, maybe he’s absolutely fucking insane for thinking it, but maybe he could take this and -- maybe this version of himself had made some good decisions to get here.

The overdosing notwithstanding. 

But, hell, if the fucking Pfizer lobby is after him, maybe he’s got a shot. And maybe Eddie could learn. 

And, either way, he’s stuck here. The danger isn’t immediate. 

Maybe this is his real shot. He can do it right this time. And - fuck - he’s apparently got an influence. It’s…

Exciting? Terrifying? 

Either way, his stomach is sloshing over itself. The sky seems to respond, rumbling dark and purple, as Eddie walks down the street. 

Then, in a moment, the thunder rolls in. He feels a few drops from the sky, and - within a few more paces - the rain collapses, falling in roiling sheets, loud against the pavement. 

He ducks under the overhang. Great. He’s about three blocks away from the hotel. But he might be able to make it back without too much damage to his clothes, running from one patio overhang to the next. It’d be easy to go back into the hotel, crawl back with his tail between his legs. Duck under some covers for a little bit and figure out the next fucking steps. 

He can’t think about what the ethics are supposed to be. This version of Eddie - the one who, somehow, ended up running for the fucking senate - died. Didn’t he? Assuming Mike was right, with his big theory, Eddie is all that’s left. 

But does Eddie have an obligation to that version of himself? To...keep going as he would’ve. 

In the apocalypse, that doesn't even fucking matter. It’s a matter of survival. But here…

Does he have to fit this mould to belong? 

Dashing between overhang to overhang, Eddie tries to outrun the rain. It’s funny. He didn’t think he’d want any of the shit from before, but, at least in those other places, he’d had someone to ask about this shit, who wouldn’t throw him into a psych ward at the first mention of alternate dimensions. 

Thunder crashes. The sky splits into light, veiny zigzags ignite the sky. 

Eddie’s sopping wet. He’s going to get struck by lightning.

And, really, there’s not much he wants to do less than die - _again._ Besides, he can’t count on the luck of the draw. If Mike was right, the first time, and he fell into these different worlds because he just _happened_ to die at the same time in different worlds. It’s a theory that’s probably best left untested. 

Although it seems like Eddie can’t stop dying, these days. 

There’s a bar, it looks like, two overhangs down. It has strings of lights in the windows and the open sign blares in red neon. 

When Eddie slips in, he has to blink. The light changes, warm and dusky. The walls are busy as all shit, filled with framed posters and loud designs. There are four clocks on the walls. Industrial lighting, bare on the wall. A rainbow flag in the corner. There’s a few groups of people, slouched over tables, all slurring words and boisterous laughter. There’s a couple at the pool table - her holding onto the stick as suggestively as possible, and him trying to pretend he’s good at the game.

But it’s not stuffy and it’s not crowded, and Eddie figures, it’ll be open late enough that he can wait out the rainstorm. He slides up to the bar, looking down at his hands - mulling over what the hell he should do about this whole mess - until the bartender comes over, and says, “Hey, what can I get for ya?” 

“I’ll take a hard cider and could I get a food menu too?” Eddie begins, looking up and sees -- “Richie?” 

And Richie smiles at him on a short exhale, his eyes wide with surprise. “Nice guess, man.” 

Eddie blinks. Richie...Richie doesn’t recognize him. _Oh shit._ He looks Richie up and down. He looks good - better than in the last dimension, at least. He’s wearing this ridiculously characteristic purpley houndstooth shirt and has a half apron around his hips, and no nametag. 

But Richie’s not staring or looking at him oddly and when he hands over the cardstock for the food menu, Eddie sees why: the name of the place, that he’d missed in his desire to get out of the rain, clear font declaring _RICHIE’S._

It’s mildly convenient, but Eddie will accept the save. He chews on his lip, nervy and ducking behind the cardstock. 

The green bottle his bartop, sweating and damp against the wood. And, Eddie looks up. Richie leans on the bar, with one hand, and says, “Anyone ever tell you you look a little like the guy running for senate?” 

Eddie snorts and mutters, “Can’t say I have.” 

“It’s a little uncanny, actually. Maybe it’s the suit. We don’t really carry any fancy shit here so suits aren’t really part of the dress code.” 

“Evidently.” 

“Jeeze, cut me down, man,” Richie laughs and shakes his head. “So what can I get for you?” 

Eddie frowns at the options on the menu: pizza, pretzels with beer cheese, nachos, burgers. “I’m allergic to gluten, dairy, and eggs. What _can_ I have?” 

“I think I can wash a head of lettuce for you.” 

“Fuck you, dude,” Eddie says before he can stop himself. Wait. No. This Richie is a total stranger and that’s not really something you can say to a total stranger. Just because, for half a second, it felt normal, doesn’t mean it _is_ normal. 

“Save it for the senatorial debates, big shot.” He snorts. But he’s smiling. “Did you wanna start a tab?” 

“Sure.” 

“Name?” 

“Eddie.” 

And, Richie snorts again. “Way to commit. Okay, Eddie, it is.” 

He winks and slides down the bar with a rag. The pool-playing couple walks up to the register to settle their tab. And, alone again, Eddie sips at his cider.

In his pocket, his phone buzzes. Eddie figures it’s someone his campaign, but pulls his phone out of his pocket anyway. 

The caller I.D reads **MA.**

He almost drops it on the bar. Blinking and manic, he punches the ‘Accept Call’ button and says, before he can stop himself, “Mommy?” 

“Sweetie, you missed our call tonight. Your father said the fundraiser probably ran long, but I reminded him that you never miss a call without at least _telling_ me first--” 

Eddie sputters. “ _Dad?”_

What the fuck? 

“Did you want to speak with him?” His mother asks. Her voice is high as he remembers it, sickeningly sweet, and, then she yells, away from the speaker: “ _Frank!_ Eddie’s on the phone!” 

“I know!” A quiet voice, away from the speaker. Eddie doesn’t recognize it. But...is it… “Hey, son. How’d the fundraiser go?” 

It’s him. Somehow, Eddie knows. 

Eddie’s voice breaks. “It went okay, Dad.” 

He can’t even remember the last thing he said to his father. And -- here he is, in this world, he’s alive. He’s been alive -- Eddie’s forty and still has both his parents. 

It takes him a moment to realize his mother had taken the phone back from his father. “---and, so, sweetheart, you need to remember to tell me about things, and keep me informed. With all the traveling you’re doing - I never know where you are from day to day!” 

It’s familiar enough, that Eddie knows to sigh. To, say, “Yeah. Okay, Ma, I will.” 

From far away, he hears his father again, “ _Dammit Sonia. It’s the middle of the night! Let the man get back to work!”_

His mother’s voice, clear and saccharine, and he can practically see the glare in her eyes. “All, right, sweetie. Well, enjoy your fundraiser. Call me tomorrow, okay?” 

Eddie doesn’t really understand, honestly that it’s this easy. For all the suffocation he still feels in the timbre of his mother’s voice, the familiarity comes with comfort. 

And, he says, “Okay, Mama, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. ‘Night.” 

Eddie hangs up his phone and, as he does, Richie slides back in front of him at the bar, refilling a glass of water from a pitcher. “So, was that your actual mom or do you have some kind of kinky arrangement with your girlfriend?” 

“My actual mom, you dick.” Eddie scoffs. “Also, that’s a weirdly familiar thing to ask a fucking customer.” 

“Says the guy who called his bartender a dick and told him to fuck off.” 

There’s a pang in his chest. Eddie has to sigh. He runs his thumb over the rim of his bottle. “Hey. I’m sorry about that. It’s just....you remind me of somebody I knew...like, a lifetime ago. Or, I guess, four lifetimes ago. Old habits die hard and shit.” 

It’s the closest he can get to honesty without having to worry about a straightjacket. 

“I remind you of an old friend and the first thing you say is ‘fuck you?’” Richie laughs, shaking his head. “Wow. You must’ve really liked this guy.” 

“I do.” If that comes as a slight shock to Richie, eyes gone wide, it’s doubly so for Eddie. Because, maybe realm jumping has made him overly candid but... 

Up until this point, this delay in meeting Richie again, he’s been his one constant in each of these dimensions. It doesn’t even occur to Eddie that, ever since he washed up in this one, he’d been looking in corners for him. 

And, maybe he can’t say shit about the interdimensional traveling and multiple deaths and shit but-- 

This is the closest he’s gotten to comfortable since he’s gotten here. 

Richie bites his tongue. Visible between his lips. “That sounds a little like a line.” 

Something there - something - stops Eddie from full-on rejecting it. He isn’t sure why. Maybe he just wants to keep talking. Maybe he’s still reeling from that last time. 

So, instead, he shrugs. “Think you can do better?” 

It’s so fucking weird, he thinks, watching out of the corner of his eye while Richie gets pulled over to the register so someone else can settle their tab or order something new or whatever the fuck they’re doing. They don’t know each other. Both other times, Richie had already been there, active in his life. 

It might not have been exactly like it was in Eddie’s lifetime, but some approximation. But, here, it’s all blank. He frowns and tries to dig into the memories from this lifetime, and think it through. 

Eddie didn’t go to school in Derry, he realizes. Maybe Richie didn’t either, but that, Eddie realizes with a soft pang, is something he can’t know. But, for his own part, Eddie went to some big boarding school in Connecticut. His father, instead of dying when Eddie was five, had gone and invested in some big ass companies. All of a sudden, Nouveau Riche, always having to prove they were worth it, he thinks. Sending Eddie to boarding school. Model U.N. Internships. Harvard. 

Reaching into his pocket, again, Eddie sucks on his inhaler. 

Richie finishes up, flashes a charming grin to the customers and slowly drags back to Eddie’s side of the bar, busying himself with the rag on the surface, scrubbing long after it should’ve been clean. 

Eddie pushes away the memories in his head. There’s nothing he can do about _that,_ this history. Instead, he focuses on Richie, who’s still wiping up the same spot that should’ve been clean half a minute ago. 

Curious, Eddie leans forward on his elbows. “So, Richie, how long have you been in the bar business?” 

“About three years,” Richie wipes the counter elsewhere, using no elbow grease, standing closer to Eddie’s seat. “I live in one of the apartments upstairs. So back when this was the Cavalier Bar I was a frequent enough of a flyer. So when Sam, the guy who owned it before me, wanted to retire, I just kind of...took it over. Re-branded. It seemed like the right thing to do.” 

“And you’re happy with it?” 

Richie smiles, runs his thumb over the edge of the bar. “Yeah. You know. You meet a lot of cool people. A lot of drunk assholes, too. But, usually it’s cool people.” 

Eddie laughs, and he feels warm in the chest and it’s...it’s nice.

They keep talking. The time slips by. It’s pointless small-talk, aiming nowhere, punctuated with Richie’s inane jokes and wordplays and Eddie shaking his head and acting like he isn’t stifling laughter. 

And they keep going, talking on and on. Eventually, Eddie even orders mozzarella sticks, despite the breading, and finds that his face isn’t swelling. His eyes don’t water. All he does is keep laughing, chatting, with Richie. 

At some point, Richie has to push a sleeve up, exposing his arm, with all its little hairs and sinew. 

Eddie definitely does not gawk, but instead redirects the way his eyes fell. “Is that a fucking _Street-Fighter_ tattoo?” 

“Uh, yeah.” Richie looks down at his forearm, the inked in characters, blocky to look pixellated, engaged in power stances - a head lock between the two of them. “I spent a lot of time in the arcade as a kid.” 

“Didn’t you have any friends?” And maybe it’s harsher than Eddie meant it to be, but he wants to place Richie somewhere, somehow. He wants to know what _this_ Richie looked like, way back in 1989, in a world where there had never been a killer clown or a Losers Club. 

While Eddie was doing Model U.N Richie was…what? In the arcade? Alone? 

Richie shakes his head. “Not really.” 

“Why not?” 

Richie blinks at him.

And all Eddie can do is cough. “I mean, y’know. You seem fun.” 

“Well, uh,” Richie gestures to the far wall - two fingers pointing towards either the flag in the corner or an exposed length of piping. Eddie figures it’s the former, especially when Richie adds, “It was the 80s.” 

Eddie can feel the crinkles in his forehead when he raises his eyebrows. He wishes it wasn’t so obvious. “You were out in the 80s?” 

“Oh, fuck no, dude. No way. But, I, uh, I kinda got a crush on this guy, and he found out and…” He looks wistful, far off onto the swirls in the wood on the bar. He takes a cup and holds it under the nozzle of some amber ale. He shoots it back. His chin points all the way up the ceiling before he comes back down to finish. “Turns out he wasn’t a very nice person. And then after that, well, nobody wanted to hang out with the fag.” 

“Didn’t that...like, _hurt?”_

And Richie laughs at that once, sharp and barking. “It haunts me to this day.” 

Eddie nods, and runs his thumb on the rim of his cup. Something hazy pulls at the back of his mind, and after a moment he can’t help but ask, “When did you know?” 

“That I’m gay?” Richie squints and looks around himself. “Fuck, man. I dunno. Probably around the time in middle school, I saw a guy and it made me feel like, I dunno, I just needed to be _around_ him. When did you find out that you’re…” He stops, waves his hand around in the space between them. “Feel free to finish my sentence.” 

Eddie stops. Tapping his cup on the bar, he looks back up to Richie. “I can’t.” 

Richie frowns, he looks to the side and says, “What do you mean?” 

Only that, in the last world he lived in, he was married to Richie. And then, before that, they’d been sleeping together, and no matter where Eddie goes, Richie turns up and he never feels quite as off-kilter and relaxed as when Richie’s with him. Even now, in this world, after they’ve barely met. 

There’s something reassuring and frightening in Richie’s face, every time it pops in. No matter the context. 

Is it even possible, Eddie wonders, that he might’ve gone forty fucking years without even realizing he’s absolutely blown away with the blue in Richie’s eyes? Maybe he’s always been. 

And, the longer he thinks about it, the more sense it makes. Well. All right then. 

_If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck…_

But what he says is “It’s complicated.” 

“You’ll figure it out,” Richie nods, and although he’s about to say something else, the last few stragglers approach the bar and Richie has to step away to ring them up. 

He smiles through the interaction, telling some offhand jokes and waving as they walk away. 

When Richie comes back after settling that tab, he leans on the bar. Eddie can see the vein on his arm, visible through the sporadic hairs there. “Hey, Eddie. It’s past last call. Do you want anything for the road? I can talk to the owner, get you another cider on the house.” 

“I’m not finished with this one.” Eddie says, and reaches for his wallet. He pulls out his credit card and slides it across the bar. 

“All righty, let’s see what your real name is--” Richie takes the card and, looking at it, his jaw drops. “Oh shit! You...you _are_ the guy running for senate.” 

Eddie pops back his beer. It’s bitter going down, more bitter than most ciders he’s had. The thing that drives him insane, though, is that he doesn’t even know if it’s a matter of the brand this place carries, or if it’s something in this dimension. 

And that’s...that isn’t a very healthy way to live. Always wondering about the details. Eddie doesn’t know how he’s going to manage that, for...however long he’s stuck here. This might just be how he lives now. And he doesn’t know if he can take that. 

All he can get himself to say is, “Yep.” 

“Shit. That changes a few things,” Richie mutters. 

It’s under his breath, but Eddie hears it nonetheless. “What do you mean?” 

“Nothing.” Richie says, quickly. “I was gonna vote for you anyway.” 

“You don’t have to say that.” 

“Well, hey,” Richie slides the card over in the cash register, taps it on the side of the screen. “Don’t go picking out curtains. I do have _some_ beef. But, overall? I like your shit.” 

Eddie has to look into his hands, steeple them on the bottle. This world is so -- so _vastly_ different. He still has both of his parents. He’s running for political office and all he knows about his stances is that Pfizer has him by the balls and that Richie has ‘some beef.’ Gretta Keane works for him. 

He takes so much Xanax on a daily basis that he overdosed and nobody noticed. 

And that tonight’s the first time he’s met Richie. 

It’s wildly fucked up. 

Although, it’s not like any other version of Eddie’s life is any less fucked up than this. It all comes down to the specific kind of fucked up, doesn’t it? 

But…this…

In this world, he isn’t going to be impaled by a demon clown. Or, probably not. He probably wouldn’t have guessed _that_ was the dimension he was living in if he’d just stumbled into it for ten minutes. But - _this_ Eddie, if he pokes into his memory, doesn’t even know that kind of terror. 

He knows getting shipped to boarding school. To his mother crying and petting his hair and telling him how, if it wasn’t for him, his father would leave like everyone else, and how important it was that Eddie come home as much as possible. 

That’s its own kind of terror but it’s not exactly _life-threatening,_ either. 

This might be it. He might have to...fucking, find a way to belong here. 

Richie slides his credit card back over the bar. Eddie twists on the bar stool, sliding his card back into his wallet, he presses his lips together. “I guess I should head out. Let you close up.” 

“Oh, okay.” Richie says, looking down to his feet. “I’ll lock the doors behind you.” 

They walk, quietly, through the space. Eddie’s shoes stick, here and there, to the floor. Ripping up like velcro. And Eddie reaches for the door. The bell dings overhead. 

And he turns. His heart is up in his throat. He’s going to wake up tomorrow and get caught up in the details of this life. There’s nothing that he can do. 

There's nothing he can do about any of this. But, if he's stuck here, he needs to do _something._

The contradictions. What does he owe this version of himself? Is it any different than what he wants for himself? 

He’s staying here. He needs to. While versions of him seem to be dying left and right, he can’t imagine what’d happen if he got himself thrown back into the fray he’d come from. What’d happen if he had to face the Clown and its sewer all over again. 

It’s too much and it’s just fucking bullshit. He’s standing here, half inside and half outside, and - more than anything - he doesn’t want to leave. 

“Well, it’s been fun, Eddie,” Richie says, untying his apron and folding it over the nearest chiar. He reaches in the window and pulls the switch. The ‘OPEN’ sign flickers dark. The light strings turn off. The overhead lights glow orange around them. “Feel free to stop by whenever. I’d love to serve a cheap cider to a fuckin’ senator.” 

“And what if I don’t win?” 

Eddie’s half expecting Richie to roll his eyes, say something sarcastic like, ‘Well, fuck, it’s D.C or no D.’ But, instead, Richie smiles and says, “Let me reword it. I’d love to serve a cheap cider to _you_.” 

Eddie can’t help but smile. “Does it have to be cheap? That shit kind of tastes like mud.” 

“Well, fuck -- cheap’s all I’ve got.” 

“I guess we can make that work.” Eddie says. 

“Okay. Sounds good.” 

“Good.” 

Eddie runs his tongue along the inside of his cheek and pauses. He runs his hand in the doorway. The wood is cool and a little bit of paint is peeling by his thumbnail. 

They’re waiting in the doorway, in this half-dark, the empty spaces in the bar, in the street by them. The rain stopped, but the streets are deep with puddles and reflecting the light in his periphery. 

He backs away, tripping over his dress shoes. The door clicks shut and Eddie turns away, feeling heavy. 

If he looks back in his own thoughts, he knows he’s staying in the hotel, just down the way. He should go back to his room, and curl up into the King-sized bed, and bury his head into the downy pillows. 

It’s depressing as shit. 

This is the calmest it’s ever been - ever since he started in with the whole dimension-hopping thing. The world hasn’t ended. The house didn’t catch fire. He just…

Overdosed before a big fundraiser. 

He’s alone. He doesn’t know where anyone is. And only just met Richie. 

And...this is it, huh? If he has to find a way to belong here…

There has to be more than fundraisers and Xanax and the sheet of normalcy he’s fucking living under. 

The street looks long. 

One lifetime ago, he was married to Richie. They were living with Stanley and his wife and Ben had officiated their marriage. Two lifetimes ago, it was the end of the world, but he still had Mike and Beverly and Richie. And three....he didn’t have much. A business. A wife. An extramarital affair. And what he did have, he was kind of making a mess of. 

It wasn’t that different than his real life. Or this one. 

Eddie’s hands feel clammy. 

He’s good at making a mess of himself. 

But, fuck, he doesn’t want to do it alone. 

Turning on his heels, before he knows what he’s doing, Eddie hauls himself, jogging, back to the front of the bar. The lights are out, but inside, ehe can see Richie leaning over the tables, wiping them with a damp rag. 

Eddie raises his fist, before he can stop himself, and knocks on the door. He pounds it, really. The glass shakes in the pane. 

Richie jolts up and - seeing Eddie standing there - crosses back over, lanky legs going everywhere as he steps through the restaurant. He has to stop to twist the deadbolt when he gets there and Eddie's breath is shaking with each delay. 

He swings the door open, concerned, “Hey. Did you leave something?” 

Holding in that last shaking breath, Eddie steps forward. He presses up to his toes and doesn’t let himself think too hard. He kisses Richie. His hands clamp on either side of Richie’s collar and Eddie pulls him down to his level. 

Richie’s holding onto his waist. He’s walking him backwards, slamming the door behind them. He’s kissing back. 

And - fuck - it feels good. He’s warm and wet and moving against him. Lips forming a dozen little pecks. Eddie can’t help but smile into them. Sigh when they dissolve into something more lasting - lingering, long. 

Eddie’s back is up against the door. The glass is cool against the thin fabric of his shirt. And melting and reassembling, moving into and around Richie’s mouth, and he’s held together by the gooey parts of him. 

In his head, moments flash by. Richie’s voice, spinning in the darkness between his eyes clenched shut. 

“ _You’re still wearing your wedding ring.”_

_“Are we, in your world? Close, I mean.”_

_“I love you.”_

_“You’re braver than you think.”_

It’s the tone, the timbre, the shake, that feels like Richie’s common denominator. Just like Richie, here, each time, seems to be Eddie’s. 

Well...fuck. Eddie shivers into Richie’s mouth. 

They break apart with a sloppy pop between their lips, but their foreheads are touching. Richie’s glasses look foggy and Eddie can’t help but laugh at the image. 

Richie, though, ignores it. He, without moving his hands, says, “You know, the opening guy kind of owes me, and my place is just...right upstairs...” 

Eddie’s gut lurches at the insinuation, the suggestion. Is Richie really asking him…

Oh. Fuck. Eddie’s feels the saliva pool under his tongue. He wants to. His stomach flips into himself. There’s heat and pressure inside him and -- 

This is Richie. 

Richie is the person who broke his arm worse by trying to snap it into place. Who talked him down before they went down into the sewer, and took him by the hand. Eddie has a full lifetime worth of memories with Richie. A full lifetime and then some. 

They were married once. Till death did they part. 

Richie’s always been there. 

But not _this_ Richie. 

To this Richie, Eddie’s only some semi-anonymous politician. Someone he’s seen on TV and only met tonight. 

What Richie’s suggesting, and what Eddie’s thinking are two vastly different things. 

Eddie has all this baggage that Richie doesn’t have, and doesn’t that _complicate_ things? 

And, either way, he’s been dying an awful lot lately, too. There’s not much around here that can kill him, he doesn’t think, anything more than average but...does he really want to do all this again? 

And, so, Eddie sighs. He’s shaky. “Rich, I...I can’t.” 

Every muscle in Richie’s face falls. He steps back, hands dropping from his ribs. “Oh. Right. I get it.” He throws off a humorless laugh, looks down at the floor, just off Eddie’s shoulder. “You’ve got the election coming up. Can’t afford to compromise those numbers with a big ol’ scandal.” 

“No. That isn’t what I meant.” Eddie frowns.

“Hey, it’s fine. I...I get it. Trust me. It’s cool.” 

What Eddie wants to say is “I don’t think you do get it, Richie.” He _wants_ to turn around and tell Richie everything and have Richie somehow _know_ everything right away. He wants _this_ Richie to spin around and turn into _his_ Richie and he wants to step deeper into the bar together, with a shared history and implicit understanding. 

But that’s simply not possible. He can’t have that. 

And so, he says, “Thanks, man,” instead. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With this chapter, we're going on a hiatus for a couple of weeks! My partner and I go to grad school in different states and have different spring breaks, so I'll be traveling up to them during my break, and they're visiting me during theirs with the bracketing weekends in transit! ~~I'm very excited to see them. Andalsotheygetalertsformyficsoifyou'rereadingthisAmberhiiloveyouican'twaittoseeyou~~. Anyway, I hope this longish chapter will make up for the weeks between the updates!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today's afternoon (EST) Friday update is brought to you by my school extending spring break and moving classes online because of Coronavirus. So um. Stay safe and healthy everyone!

The walk back to the hotel feels long. Water reflects the streetlights on the blacktop and sidewalks, shallow puddles on the ground. It glistens orange into the night sky. It’s a gray, cloudy expanse above. And, Eddie thinks, it fits. 

Honestly, it’s pretty rare that Eddie feels so out to sea. Even in the most hopeless moments, there’d been some kind of next step in front of him. He could just focus on doing the next thing and wring his hands about the crisis and fall back on  _ normal,  _ whether that was stacks of paperwork or his mother or his wife or whatever. Even in the gloomier moments, it didn’t register as misery because he always had something to focus on. 

And -  _ sure -  _ he’s got a fuck ton fo focus on now. For example, how the shit is  _ he,  _ Edward Kaspbrak, from a world where demons emerge from the sewers and all of his professional experience comes from the private insurance firms, going to run for senator? He’s nowhere near qualified. 

But, nevertheless, he can’t shake the way the city seems to expand around him, the way he feels so completely out of his depth. Not just for his work, but...well…

For everything. 

He sighs, walking a little bit faster when the hotel returns into eyeshot. When he left Richie, with his tail between his legs, he’d looked so sad, no matter how hard he was trying to hide it in nonchalance. Richie held the door open for him again, and leaned up against the door frame and said, “You should still stop by next time you’re in town.” 

“Really?” Eddie had asked, standing half inside, half outside. 

Richie swallowed as he nodded, and said, “Yeah. I wasn’t  _ just  _ thinking with my dick when I said that earlier. It was, like, half-and-half.” 

Eddie scoffed and smiled and agreed, and awkwardly teetered in the door as they said their goodbyes and - once again - the doors locked behind him. 

And, from there, he’s in a beeline, all the way back to the hotel. There’s a different doorman now, at 2:30 in the morning, but Eddie still doesn’t have to make an effort to walk back through the lobby and into the elevator. 

It gives him more time to think than, really, he wants or needs. The key card slides in the door and, when he slides back in, the room is hauntingly full, even without bodies. The signage and posters for his campaign still fill the room. The binders are open on the coffee table. There’s now-cold coffee lying in the bottom of the carafe. 

Eddie doesn’t want to think about it, and crawls into the bedroom portion of the suite, stripping into his undershirt and underwear falls onto the pillow.

It’s four before he falls asleep, for everything swarming around in his head. 

* * *

Eddie’s wakeup call comes at seven. He’s scrunching up his face and rubbing at his eyes as he reaches blindly for the hotel phone on the receiver. And maybe he’s groggy and grumpy when he answers it, but he doesn’t mean to be. It’s not the receptionist’s fault that Eddie hadn’t made it to bed before three in the morning. 

But, hopefully, he wasn’t too short with her. He really can’t remember, before he’s saying, “Thank you,” and staring back at the popcorn ceiling. 

His entire body’s aching. He’s exhausted. With a blubbering sigh, he grabs his cell phone. His agenda pops up on a bubble of his screen. He has an eight o’clock meetup this morning with his team in the hotel restaurant. They’re driving back to Derry in the afternoon and he has dinner with his folks in the evening. And - other than that - his calendar is all empty white blocks. 

So, it looks like he needs to hurry up and wait. All day long. 

But first - breakfast. 

He’s about to put his phone down. But, something grabs hold of him first, and he doesn't’ even realize what he’s doing when he taps the web bar and starts typing with his thumbs:  _ richie’s bar portland maine  _

The web page opens up, There’s the business summary on the left hand side. Photographs of the store’s facade, a couple empty interiors of the tables and wall decor. The description reads:  _ Casual fun bar & gathering place serving all your favorite booze, pub grub, and all the best chucks.  _

And Eddie rolls his eyes. Underneath, there’s the address and phone number. The store hours, 3PM-2AM daily. The website for the menu, a couple live music events coming up later in the month. The place has a 4.6 star rating with over three hundred Google reviews, and - in spite of himself, Eddie mutters, “Good for you, Rich,” under his breath. 

He knows the clock’s ticking before the breakfast meeting, and - if he’s going to live this life, in  _ this  _ Eddie’s place - he needs to soak up all the information he can get. But, nevertheless, he selects the reviews and starts thumbing through them. 

It’s a lot of basic platitudes: “ _ Great atmosphere. Good mix of events and quiet nights that you’re sure to find something that works for you!” “Richie’s hilarious and the drinks are good. Food’s pricey though.” and “Friendly customers and staff. Great cocktails too. LGBT friendly.”  _

Though some of the reviews were more scathing. “ _ I tried so hard to like this place but the food’s too expensive and the owner thinks he’s funnier than he is.”  _ One person gave a two star review that just said, “ _ There are apartments upstairs.”  _ And, a few, especially infuriating ones, that felt more like personal attacks. The most recent one has Eddie gnawing a chunk out of his inner cheek. “ _ If an American business is going to support the gay agenda they should have it plain and clear before duping people into spending their hard earned money here.”  _

But then, a little lower, there’s a response. “ _ Did you  _ **_not_ ** _ see the big rainbow flag on the wall when you walked in? Like. He’s not hiding it.”  _

The reaction, its dry humor, makes Eddie crack a grin. It’s a grin that drops as soon as he sees the name attached to it:  **_George Denbrough._ **

“What?” Eddie whispers, lurching up in bed. 

And, sure, it makes total sense that in a world without Pennywise, Georgie would still be alive. That, in this world, Georgie would’ve come back after playing in the rain and learned to play the piano from Mrs. Denbrough and gone to college and lived to the age of…

How old would he be now? 

Thirty-four? 

Unsure, and feeling the creases in his forehead, Eddie takes again to the search bar at the top of his browser.  _ George Denbrough,  _ he types. 

The first result is a profile on some social media site called  _ LifePages.  _ The profile picture is definitely Georgie, even with his sharper adult features and beard. He has pictures on display of parasailing and, then another of him and Bill around a bonfire with marshmallows. 

Eddie selects the picture and, following the tag, finds Bill’s page. He looks happy. His page still reroutes to his author website. His status updates revolve around his books and he shares photos here and there. 

But then, as Eddie scrolls down, a post from a couple weeks ago. “ _ I am so ecstatic to announce that my newest book, Paper Boats, will come out in the spring!”  _ And - there - the top comment: 

Mike Hanlon commented, “ _ Congrats _ !” 

Eddie gnaws on his lower lip. He selects Mike’s profile. 

The occupation portion of his profile still reads  _ Librarian at Derry Public Library,  _ but all his recent updates are talking about vacation. There are pictures with a dog on a vast beach, and a low quality photograph in front of the It’s a Small World ride at Disney World. Otherwise, Mike talks about historic events and how he won a sweepstakes with Pepsi to win some big package, and - yeah, that all seems to check out. 

Eddie’s eyes flash over Mike’s profile. He’s looking for a familiar face, a name - something - just to see if he can find a trend here...

It takes him to Mike’s friend list - though it’s called the  _ Connections  _ list, here. Not only does Mike have Bill and Georgie, but Richie’s there, too and, Eddie has to swallow down a strangled yelp of excitement, Stanley too. 

Stanley hasn’t posted anything in months. His profile only has a few posts on it. Eddie thinks it fits. 

There’s one picture, though, that catches Eddie’s eye. He selects the post to see Stanley and the exact same woman from the last world, Patty, standing in front of a white doorway. There’s a small mezuzah affixed to the frame, and they stand holding up the keys. Turns out, Stanley didn’t even post the picture, but Patty tagged him. They beam at the camera, and the description reflects that. “ _ Patricia Blum Uris says, ‘It’s finally done! @Stanley Uris and I have moved into our new house! It’s a dream come true. Thanks so much to @Ben Hanscom of @Hanscom & Associates for the wonderful design and easy building period!’”  _

And - well - if that wasn’t one of the easiest ones yet. Eddie opts for the personal page. Ben comments and mentions everything. There’s literally hundreds of posts. Most are dedicated to the people in his life, mostly people Eddie doesn’t know. He thanks them for all the things they do and their influence in his life and the things they do. It’s very sweet. Incredibly genuine. And, as Eddie scrolls down, he finds the last one: 

“ _ If you ever need a suit or a tailor or anything for any kind of event, definitely give @Beverly Marsh a try. She’s got style for days and is one of the most genuine people I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. She works hard, kicks ass while she does it, and can always put a smile on your face or jam to the best throwbacks you can think of. Thanks for everything, Bev!”  _

The top comment, of course, is Beverly’s reply: “ _ You’re too kind, Ben. Hang tough, New Kid on the Block. :)”  _

Eddie goes ahead and selects Beverly’s name. Her cover photo has a big bouquet of white roses and little sprigs of lavender. She studied in Chicago but, also, still lives in Derry. She’s married to Kay McCall and 

What the shit? 

Eddie’s eyes lock onto that personal detail. He scrolls down on her page, and looks at the photo albums.  _ Marsh-McCall Wedding (2011).  _ The top photo is Beverly, in a sleek white suit, holding Kay with both hands around her waist. She’s smiling broadly and gazing over at her bride. And, it’s the same people. It’s the same Beverly and the same Kay. 

Holy shit. 

There’s a decent part of this that, in spite of all the impossible things that have happened to Eddie recently, feels unbelievable. And, it’s not that Beverly’s into women. That doesn’t matter. Whether Beverly’s a lesbian or bisexual across the board, or just in this world, isn’t the interesting part of that hypothesis. 

(Although, that sort of thing  _ seems  _ to stick, in his case at least. However odd it feels to think of himself in such frank terms. The last few worlds proved it and last night drove it home. And, it’s seemed to stick in Richie’s case. Although, Eddie can’t speak for Richie across the board. Eddie has no idea what Richie’s deal is in his own world. Although, whether or not  _ his  _ version of Richie could possibly love him, doesn’t matter. That’s so far away. He can’t think about it too long. And -  _ anyway, anyway, anyway -  _ that isn’t the point.) 

_ Anyway _ ! 

In this particular instance, that isn’t the interesting part. The thing that strikes Eddie, staring at this LifePages profile, is how easy it was to locate all of his old friends. When he goes back into these memories, from this world, he can locate meeting Beverly, once briefly during an interlude about PR with Kay. He remembers a few cordial meetings with Ben during his day job as Assistant City Manager. But - everyone else? 

Nothing. 

And, yet, there’s come kind of webbing connecting them. Through mutual friends, or at least acquaintances. They’ve been circling each other, in this world, their whole lives and, apparently, simply never crossed over to become Lucky Seven. 

It’s not the most depressing thought that’s swarmed around in his head lately, but - honestly - it’s up there. 

His phone blares - a loud pitchy trill in his hands - a photoless name showcases the incoming call  _ GRETTA KEANE.  _

Eddie bites his tongue and accepts the call. “Hello?” 

“Yeah, that the fuck, where are you?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“Breakfast? The meeting was supposed to start half an hour ago.” 

Eddie blinks and, moving the phone away from his ear, checks the time.  _ 8:32AM.  _ “Shit. I’ll be right down.” 

It’s a bizarre kind of urgency. A tightness in his chest. He needs to backtrack and figure out the details of this new life, but in the meantime, he can’t afford to burn bridges and be late to meetings and shit. 

He doesn’t know. He’s just always hated the feeling of being where he wasn’t supposed to be. Which...kind of has a sick irony to it these days. 

But, he jumps up out of bed and throws on his clothes and scrubs at his teeth for the full two minutes, because you can’t afford to cut corners there, but he doesn’t take the time to shave and by the time he’s in the elevator, he has a toothpaste stain on his chest and half of his collar is still up. 

But - hell - he’s here. He makes it into the restaurant, to the table with Gretta and Kay on opposite ends, with three or four college-age interns, already with their eggs and toast on the table. 

“Okay, he’s here,” Gretta observes when Eddie slides into the seat. “Let’s finally get started.” 

The waiter comes a second later with a coy smile, a mug of coffee, and “Any cream or sugar for your coffee?” and took his order without writing it down. 

Gretta, for her part, looked annoyed, but let the interaction pass before opening another binder on the table with a decisive plop. 

There’s part of Eddie that’s a little curious, a little confused, to what kind of fire lit under  _ her  _ ass in this world. Last time he saw her in his own world, she still lived in Derry, worked in her father’s pharmacy, and still dressed like it was 1992. What kind of alternate personal history would turn her into someone with approximately five hundred binders, running a fucking senatorial campaign? 

The answer’s probably there. But, Eddie isn’t sure he’d have much to gain by finding out. Other than a long conversation with Gretta and those...those don’t have the best history. 

He’s been stuck in his own train of thought too long. Gretta’s in the middle of a monologue. Something about Pfizer donating $115,000 last night alone. Kay pushed back her mimosa at that admission. Gretta glared but went on with the rest of the stats. Donors and numbers and dollar signs spin around in the space around them. 

The interns scribble on legal pads and the waiter refills Eddie’s coffee. Lots of numbers and statistics and decimals and dollar signs. It’s a lot of information that Eddie should be absorbing, but he keeps on thinking about his fucking Internet rabbit hole and sliding his eyes over to the massive fucking rock on Kay’s left hand. 

It’s not surprising, but Beverly has good taste in jewelry. White-gold, big square diamond in the center inlaid with clusters of sparkly things. 

And, when Eddie re-focuses on the actual issue at hand, there’s more demographics and policy talk and all he can do is nod his head and pretend like he’d been listening all the while. 


	11. Chapter 11

Eddie picks up the check. He’s pretty sure he can handle it - or, well, he’s running a senatorial campaign, so he’s pretty sure money isn’t an issue - and it makes sense that he’d handle everyone’s breakfast, since they’re working for him. 

It’s just…

$300 for breakfast. 

Maybe Politician Eddie never had to Extreme Coupon with Ma, but Risk Analyst Eddie certainly had. And, even if he hadn’t been financially wanting since college in pretty much every world he’s been in up to this point, $300 for breakfast still seems wildly excessive. 

It’s almost $400 after the tip, but it’s not like it’s the waiter’s fault everyone on the team got happy with the mimosas and bloody marys. 

As they’re all leaving the restaurant, Eddie skips a couple extra paces to catch up with Kay at the elevator. He isn’t even sure what he’s going to say, and it feels really fucking stupid, but when she turns to him, quizzical look smacked across her face, he blurts, “So, how’s your wife?” 

“Bev?” Kay blinks. “She’s fine. Why do you ask?” 

“Oh, well, I…” Eddie fades. What’s he supposed to say?  _ She and I were friends in another world, actually a few of them, and - I don’t know - I just want to check in because maybe we aren’t friends here, but we’re friends somewhere and doesn’t that matter?  _ Yeah, no. Instead, he says, “I was just checking in.”

“On my wife?” The confusion on Kay’s face is clear and the doors swing open with a small  _ ping.  _

“On everyone.”  _ Nice save, Eddie. Good going.  _

They step into the elevator, punching the buttons to get to their rooms. Once the doors close, Kay says, “Okay, so we’re going to have to figure out damage control when it comes out that you’re taking money from big pharma.” 

Eddie bites on his inner cheek. Right. Bigger fish. Bigger sea. And what the fuck is he supposed to do? 

...what even are his policies? His promises? And - hell - he doesn’t even know what party he belongs to. 

And it isn’t that Eddie can’t retreat back into his brain to get the answers, it’s the fact that he has to that’s the rough part. 

* * *

In this world, his parents' house is on lakefront property. It has huge picture windows, three garages, hand masoned arches and pillars and - holy shit. There’s a big weeping willow on the lawn but otherwise it rises, grandiose, clearly visible by the road. 

It doesn’t feel like coming home, Eddie thinks, as he climbs up the driveway. And he has to hold his breath and he knocks at the door. 

His father answers, and Eddie can’t help it - his jaw drops. 

Frank Kaspbrak is sixty-eight years old. He wears gold-wire rimmed glasses. His hair is gray and he has a speckled goatee hiding the wrinkles around his mouth. More emerge when he smiles. “Eddie! You’re early.” 

Eddie’s eyes burn. 

Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. 

Eddie was so young, in his own world, that he can barely remember the phantasm of his father in full health. His voice or his gait. And, sure, he’d heard him through the telephone wire, but, it could never seem as real as now - standing in front of a formerly dead man. 

The Kaspbraks aren’t a hugging family. Not in this world or any others, and Eddie knows this, but he can’t help it. He steps forward and throws his arms around his father’s shoulders, blinking away the tears so they won’t be obvious. 

It’s a revelation, as he’s standing next to him: Eddie is taller than Frank. 

He barely reached his father’s hip before he died. 

And, as they step away, his father is frowning. “Are you okay, Eddie?” 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, regulating his breathing. He can feel his father’s eyes on him, curious and disbelieving, but presses on. “Just got on the road ahead of schedule.” 

Frank nods. “I see. Well. I was just about to go out on the water, if you wanna join me in the meantime.” 

“Oh. Sure.” Eddie nods and follows his father down the hall. The ceilings are high with paintings. It’s not the sort of photographs-each-year-of-grade school faire he’d anticipate. It’s not even the homey sort of chachkis he’d come to expect in his mother’s house. It’s curated and sterile, white and gold, and fashionable. 

From the memories of this world, Eddie remembers he’d helped them pick out the interior designer. 

Frank leads Eddie out of the house proper. They walk down the stone-lined pathway down to the water. The breeze picks up, the air smells dewy, and the chills follow. Frank zips his NorthFace up to his chin, and Eddie stuffs his hands in his pockets. 

Eddie’s torn. As familiar as this trek feels to his body, and to the parts of his brain that tells him, say, his address, or the names of his staff, but the other parts of him feel so new, so strange. His father has a little bit of a limp in his stride, and maybe that’s just the miracle of old age in Frank Kaspbrak. 

They make their way to the dock. There’s a dual-level pontoon on the right side and a big white sailboat on the left. Frank leads Eddie into the sailboat, and - together, Eddie relying on muscle memory, they push off into the water. 

* * *

The breeze is cool. Eddie leans against the railing, watching the sun shimmer on the waves, the ripples and the whitecaps cresting up against the side of the boat. 

Frank comes up to his side, hands him a dark bottle of Samuel Adams. Eddie isn’t really a beer drinker - gluten and he can’t get past how yeasty it tastes - but he accepts it because it’s from his father and the two of them stand at the front of the boat. Eddie watches his father from the corner of his eye. 

It’s so surreal. His father is just standing there, next to him, on a fucking sailboat, standing with his hands in his pocket and wrinkles on his face and gray in his hair. Things that weren’t even a glimmer in his imagination, something so far-fetched it’d be hard to believe. 

“So, Eddie,” Frank says after a moment, sipping at the beer. “How’s the campaign going?”

Eddie shrugs. The water glimmers below, dark and mobile and crashing against the sides of the boat. “Fine,” He says. “We made more than $115,000 last night.” 

Frank lets out a low whistle. “Better than a poke in the eye. Good for you.” 

“Thanks, Dad.” 

And now they’re fucking talking about the fucking issues at Frank’s Rotary club and the sailing club and all the organizations and shit that Frank has the time for, now that he’s retired. Now that he made it to retirement. 

It paints a picture of this life. His father is off during the day, on the water or at a club and fraternizing with his friends and his hobbies. 

Occasionally, Frank tries to pivot the conversation to Eddie and his campaign, and if he knows how the guy who’s temporarily filling his position at City Hall is doing. But - at lest for now - Eddie doesn’t want to waste the precious moment rifling through memories and details in this part of his brain. 

It’s stupidly uncanny, and Eddie doesn’t want to waste this. He has to get to know his father - and now’s the only time, because he never really had a chance to before - but what is he supposed to say? “ _ Hello, Dad. It’s nice to meet you. You died when I was five - not here, but in another world - and I’m just so excited to meet you.”  _

There are just too many questions here - now - in this world where things are slower paced and, somehow, just so much faster and more complicated than other worlds, even if his life isn’t on the line…

And, holy shit, this might just be the rest of his life. 

But Eddie doesn’t want to fixate - not on that. And, instead focuses on the shimmering light bouncing off the waves, the dirty smell of freshwater waves, and the dry slurping his father makes against the Sam Adams. 

And they’re quiet. They barely even say anything when they draw the sails in, headed back to the dock, because Eddie doesn’t need any instructions. He’s done this before, a dozen times, since he was a kid. And it’s the only kind of father-son bonding he has, in his memories from this world, or otherwise. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usually, I'm not a fan of self-deprecating author's notes, but in this case, I do feel the need to poke at myself a little. What can I say? It's spring 2020, everyone's having a rough go of it. My personal life is kind of in the midst of a complete 180. And I haven't been able to get myself to write for fun in a while, and I couldn't find it in me to finish the scene with the Kaspbrak's family dinner - but I really wanted to write something so I don't let this story remain unfinished. 
> 
> Anyway! I hope this wasn't too much of a disappointment for anyone who waited the monthlong hiatus. I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy during this hard time. I can't offer any aid except that my inbox on Tumblr is always open for chatting (same username).


	12. Chapter 12

Ma looks...different. Sure, she’s recognizable enough with her wiry brown hair and hard green eyes. But she’s wearing pearls and - even though she’s older than Eddie’s ever seen her - there’s no gray in her hair - boldly recolored. It’s probably not those box dyes that she thought were so toxic back in his world; it’s probably something a lot more chic. Something a high school drop out with ombre highlights administered, chittering on and on about nothing important. Ma, no doubt, would play along but then turn right back and condemn the gossip to the ladies from church. 

But she lets Eddie come forward and kiss her cheek and it feels the same, nevertheless; a little cold, a little squishy, a little obligatory. 

She’s alive, though, and whatever Eddie thought he might say to Ma if he ever saw her again, he can’t bring himself to speak up. He’s left with a squeak in his throat as she hurls the grocery bags into Dad’s arms and begins going on, and on, about the race. 

Even though he figures it’d be best to listen up, listen well, and figure out what the  _ fuck  _ his campaigns about, he can’t help but go glassy and nod, hum, and stare at a thin place in the carpet. 

This, at least, feels normal. 

Without thinking, Eddie sighs. Ma turns around, hands on her hips. 

“Are you even  _ listening  _ to me, Eddie?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie says, finding himself, suddenly,too tight in his chest. Sure, this feels normal. But - what the fuck is normal worth? In all the lives he’s lived, in all the times he’s been thrust into this or that version of himself, how the hell did he wind up drawing the short stick, the stick where he sits and listens as Ma crows on, and even if Dad is alive, he’s pushed to the kitchen, and he has to sit and rely on this pill or that, in more than one? He’s  _ twitching  _ \- dear fuck, he’s  _ twitching -  _ there has to be an end to this. 

And, if Eddie’s stuck here for good - if he can manage to stay alive for another, say, thirty-seven years, there has to be a way that  _ he  _ can do it. Right? 

“Uh, Ma, I need to get some fresh air,” Eddie mumbles, pushing out of the room before Ma can begin her next sentence.  _ Are you sick? Go lie down and I’ll call the doctor--- _

He’s out the door and pacing down the dock before her tenor can reach him. He scoots down and sits on the warm wood. It’s still heated from daylight. Eddie sighs. 

If things were different, he’d call someone. Maybe Bill or Stanley. Mind, not in his own world - back where he forgot any of his friends existed - but in  _ some  _ world. He hasn’t had contact with any of them, though. Only through random internet searches and dumb luck. 

Fuck, Eddie knows Beverly firsthand here, but he can’t exactly reach out to his PR manager’s wife for this. 

There’s one option. Eddie’s stomach lurches, after how he’d left things with Richie, but...well...he’s the only one who he  _ can  _ call. 

(And, anyway, he wants to. He wants to in the same way he wants to drink.) 

With a sigh, and before he can talk himself out of it, Eddie pulls out his phone. He finds the number for Richie’s bar. He drums his fingers on his knee. He stares out into the water. Holds his breath. And then, on a blurry-vision impulse, punches the numbers in. 

The ring trills once and Eddie thinks he should hang up. This won’t end well. What does he even  _ want?  _

A second time and he’s already removing the phone from his ear. 

But then, on the other line, someone picks up. “Richie’s Tavern,” The voice says, “How can I help you?” 

He should’ve known better than to think that Richie would always be working up front in his own bar. But, still. He hadn’t expected the anonymity of the voice. “Um. Is Richie there?” 

“I think he’s probably in. Can I ask who’s calling?” 

“Um. It’s Eddie.” 

“Okay,” The voice says, after a beat. “Let me go check and see if he’s in the office. Can you hold?” 

And Eddie says sure and spins in his chair while hokey music plays into the receiver. It sounds like the Mii channel theme, or at least what Eddie can remember from company parties where they fake-bowl, but it’s off a half step. Moments repeat. Eddie can’t figure out if it’s a way to sidestep copyright or just what that particular tune sounds like in this world.

God, he hopes not. It’s awful. 

And then - the phone picks up. It’s Richie. “Hey. This is...uh...a surprise. What, you campaigning?” 

Eddie rolls his eyes and - somehow, at the same time - finds himself curling into the phone. “No. I just...uh...I wanted to apologize. I kind of, you know--” 

“Gave me the ol’ kiss-and-run?” 

Eddie barks a short laugh, but nods. “Yeah. That.” 

“I’ll have you know I only cried for twenty minutes after you left,” Richie says, grin clear in his voice. 

“Oh don’t give me that, asshole. I’m trying to apologize.” 

“No, I get that. It’s just…” Richie pauses. “You don’t really need to?” 

The uptick in his voice, Eddie thinks, reminds him of how he would talk to waiters or something. “But I wanted to.” 

There’s a moment. A beat of silence. Richie sighs on the other end and Eddie finds himself gnawing on his lower lip. And then, Richie says, “Look, Eddie, I like you. I think I was pretty fucking clear about that much. But...this...I did this a lot in my twenties and a little in my thirties and I just...I can’t do this anymore.” 

Eddie blinks. He’s staring at a patch of wall. The white paint is clear, smudged with fingerprints, and empty in front of him. “What the hell are you talking about?” 

“This.” Richie says. And when Eddie doesn’t say anything else, he goes on. He’s tinny over the receiver. “Y’know. You’re questioning and trying to see if you like being with guys. That whole thing? And. I just...I don’t really  _ do  _ that anymore.” 

“Look, Richie that’s--” 

“And, the other night, I dunno. I guess I was thinking we had a…it’s fucking lame, but I mean, we clicked, right? But, I mean, I think we were on two different pages and, well, I don’t think I’m willing to be on yours.” 

And...well...Eddie sighs. They  _ are  _ on different pages. Richie isn’t wrong - not entirely. 

But, just, not like  _ that.  _

Eddie rocks from side to side in the chair. Swiping a hand up into his hair, feeling the hardened gel crunch in his palm, he tries something different. “Okay. Just, Richie...look. I’m not gonna ask you what you’re wearing or anything like that. And I’m not asking you to be my big gay tour guide. But, I mean...” He swallows and tries to get a grip of all the qualifiers and deviations from his point. “We can still be friends, right?” 

Richie, from the other end, chuckles. It’s soft and Eddie can imagine what he looks like, the top row of his teeth peeking out. “Wow, man. A friendship proposal. Super eighth grade. Fine, I’ll be your pal. As long as I get to copy your biology notes.”

“Fuck off.” Eddie laughs. And, yeah, maybe he’s being a little juvenile. But, they live so far away. He doesn’t know how close the social-media connections are, and if this Richie and the Eddie from this world have gone this long without making more -- 

That night can’t be the end of it. 

He won’t let it be. Friendship is what they had back in his own world. They can have friendship again. 

But, as they laugh together on the phone line, Eddie can feel the phantom touch, the pressure on his lips, and he can’t stop himself from thinking what it’d feel like to kiss him again. 

Before he can think too hard, though, Ma’s voice is railing from the other end of the door. “Eddie? Come in, you’ll catch your death out there! Supper’s ready.  _ Really,  _ Eddie, you need to come  _ in  _ now!” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me...(or, y'know, not).


End file.
